El Cantante: Trophy Spouse Upstaged By Screeching Shrew Stereotype

By Prairie Miller

If El Cantante is any indication of exactly who wears the pants in the Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony household, it's definitely JLo. The celebrity couple collaborated on this musical biopic about Hector Lavoe to pay homage to the gifted but wasted Puerto Rican salsa legend turned addict. But instead, Anthony's heavily drugged henpecked trophy hubby Lavoe is upstaged offstage at all times by Lopez as the singer's screeching nag of a wife, Puchi. The music is just fine, but the social sensibility fueling that particular '70s Nuyorican cultural moment in which Lavoe blossomed and self-destructed, in particular the rise in political consciousness and righteous rage of the Young Lords, is nowhere to be found. If only JLo had just stifled it, and let her significant other shine.

Prairie Miller