Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Aspen Orson There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

naturalgirlworld Hated second part where new actors came in , this made no sense

Jack Butler The music, sense of place, acting and characters were compelling and wonderful, up until the time jump. The shift in actors was jarring and the "old" versions lacked the charm and energy of the original cast. In particular, the actress who played the "old" Lola, was a pastiche of mannerisms. It appears someone told her that "drug addicts" play with their mouths continually. Her constant touching of her lips and cheeks was distracting, and by all accounts had nothing to do with the real La Lupe, upon whom the character was supposed to be based. The "old" Pedro had the energy of a spent copper-top, running the emotional gamut from A to B. Seriously, this was essentially two novellas, jammed together any old way. Wonderful for the first half, and a slog of amateur hour performances for the second.

oscarboy-28380 I am a big fan of Celia Cruz. I loved her. She was a unique world-class talent. I don't know where to start in listing the worst aspects of the telemundo series. But It may be helpful to start out by saying that, despite the fact, that they cast an excellent singer in the role, she rarely sang. I scanned through the ridiculous story line to find moments where she was actually singing. Not surprising they got the racial aspects all wrong for Cuba at the time. Celia was a black singer, singing an African based musical form they could've done so much to educate the audience about its origins and history. Despite the fact that Cuba has many people of mixed race at that time black people knew who they were and Sonora Mantancera was predominantly a black group. Almost all of the plot lines were ridiculous.But most egregious was the depiction of Pedro Knight as a horny buffoon. Shame on Telemundo!

Francisco Casals Celia, a fictional narrative inspired in real life legend Celia Cruz, started high and strong but as the series progressed it just went down hill. The disclaimer at the beginning of each episode stating that is a "fictional account of Celia's life" sounded to me as an excuse to justify the "Telenovela treatment" given by the Director and writers. Although beautifully filmed and with a VERY strong cast, the poor writing, historical inaccuracies and inconsistency in the characters aging really hurt the story. Filler characters and sub-plots such as Mario (the unrelatable, spineless and overly silly best friend) that was not only annoying but it had no use in the main storyline. The homosexual relationship between Celia's cousin Gamalier and the dance choreographer Rene was a promising sub-plot (portraying a homophobic Cuban Regime) became a sinking ship in slow motion. They make the viewers care for this couple only to give an off-screen death to Gamalier and having Rene committing suicide, even the timeline of the events have inaccuracies. Nuris, Celia's jealous sister, was a hard-to- dislike villain (thanks to Aida Bossa incredible acting) that was reduced to be a one-dimensional character that only became more annoying over time. Nuris ( who is suppose to be Celia's older sister) the aging process had a lot of discrepancies (a problem across the board in the series) particularly when, after transitioning from "young" Celia to "old" Celia actresses Nuris remained being played by "young" Nuris and when they finally aged her the "old" Nuris the other actress failed to seamlessly portray the same character, they're not even physically similar. Another failure character was Oscarito (Celia's surrogate son), that was supposed to make Celia happy and protect her, yet he couldn't protect her from Eliezer's machinations and just became an adornment in the plot. A highlight, Lola Calvo (character loosely based on real-life singer La Lupe), masterfully played by Carolina Gaitan (young-self) & Marcela Gallego (old-self) was another promising plot line that suffered from the Telenovela treatment reducing the character to a melodrama cartoon along with her Step-father/Lover Eliezer which also was unnecessary to bring back into the plot after he was sent to jail (another one-dimensional character with aging inconsistencies). The aging process was a big fail across the board with many characters, there was not attention to detail, constant errors that eroded the world the story tried to capture. The accents inaccuracies were another big issue: You had Cuban characters with Colombian accents such as a child Celia, Ollita, at times old Nuris among others. Clearly, the Director failed here, this accents inaccuracies hurt the credibility of the story. As a writer and director myself who's currently developing a fictional biography (that is not based on a real-life person) I have to spend a LOT of time in historical research and attention to details in order to make a fictional world entirely believable... something that failed miserably in this TV series.