User reviews

My wife Emiliana and I really got into this excellent story through the first 56 episodes, Mui Bueno, BUT then Netflix changed all the main actors.... DELICADO KILLED THE SERIES FOR ME. Porque Seniors, que esta tu problema? You ruined the whole story line for us. All you had to do was to make the actors appear older. At the time of the 1959 Communist takeover of Cuba, Sonora Matancera was touring in Mexico, and members of the band decided to leave Cuba for good even if the Netflix version was not accurate it was close to the truth. Cilia decided that crossing into the United States instead of returning to their homeland was better. I liked the original Pedro Knight, he had a great personality that was likable and he was funny, the replacement actor did well enough but it was never the same.

PLEASE read the opening credits so that you will know this is NOT an actual biography of Celia Cruz? Even with this being said I am really enjoying the series, and it is getting more interesting as it moves along. Jeimy Osorio is doing a good job and I think Celia would be proud of her, the other cast members performances are extremely moving as well (Modesto Lacen as Pedro Knight, Carolina Gaitan as Lola Calvo,Brenda Hanst as Ana, Indhira Serrano as Mirelys, Luciano D'Alessandro as Alberto Blanco just to name a few). Even though it's NOT Celia's biography, the performances are good (some outstanding), but it would have been a little bit better to get Celia's still living husband's take on some of what's being presented (if he didn't have any that is). Feel sorry about her Mom and didn't know she (Celia) died without ever being able to go back to Cuba (according to Wikipedia). She really was one talented lady. Can't wait to see how this ends.

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!

Wednesday, 9 December 2015 English is my first language, but I speak, read and write Spanish well, all self taught. I am thrilled this show is on the aire. I love this show although it is Not an official authorized version, but I love it for a few reasons.

1. This is the second time ever or in many years that on a major Spanish television network such as Univision or Telemundo that there have been my people {Mi gente} African Latinos represented on the two biggest Spanish networks. I have often felt and said that Univision and Telemundo are prejudice and racist in the fact that every single soap opera/telenovela only show White skin Hispanics on all of their soap operas, which is Not a fair representation of All Latinos.

The same racism exist on Spanish magazine covers such as "People in Español", "TV & Notas" and other Latin American magazines. For years, I subscribed and supported such Spanish language magazines until about 4 years ago due to there were Never in any dark skin Latinos on their magazine covers. Only when Celia Cruz died was she put on the covers. Once in a rare while when there was a dark skin Hispanic, they would be inside the magazine or on the cover with several White skin Hispanics thereby reducing the dark skin Hispanic on the cover. I cancelled my subscription nearly 4 years ago.

The Univision and Telemundo producers seem to either forget or ignore that there are thousands of dark skin Latinos from Cuba, Colombia, Panama, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic who are equally talented and gifted equal to their White skin Hispanic counterparts.

If it were Not for the United States America giving African Spanish speaking Latinos such as Laz Alonso, Tatyana Ali, Gina Torres, Zoe Saldaña, Lauren Velez, Cristina Milian and former t.v series Starsky & Hutch co-star, Antonio Fargas and others a chance to work in films, they would not be working at all. All of the dark skin Hispanics speak Spanish fluently,but you will never see them on Univision nor Telemundo. There is only one pretty dark skin Colombian newscaster on Telemundo, Ilia Calderon. Yo soy un Africano Americano con un corazon Latino. Ellos son Mi gente. I am so happy and proud to see dark skin Latinos in film and television. The music of Salsa was created by Africans and Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians Latinos. Merengue was created by Africans and Dominican Latinos.

The only other all Hispanic show that was shown with a very dark skin Latino in a lead role was Colombian actor, Walter Diaz in the soap opera/telenovela "Adrian Esta Visita" aka "Luzbel Esta Visita" in 2001.

2. The pretty JeirMaria Osorio {Puerto Rico} who was in a small supporting role of a Brazilian wife in the "Fast & Furious 5" plays the lead role of African Cubana salsa superstar Celia Cruz. She is excellent in this role, but she is so much prettier than Celia was in real life. Also, African Latino actor Modesto Lacen of Puerto Rico is doing a great job as well as the rest of the cast.

Pretty Colombiana, Carolina Gaitan and African Colombiana, Brenda Hanst are equally talented as well as cute. All of these talented dark skin Hispanics truly deserve to been seen on prime time Univision and Telemundo soap opera shows, but sadly due to racism in the Latin TV industry they will Not be seen beyond "Celia" program until another program based on a famous African Latino/Latina is made famous.

I just complete the entire season of Celia, the life and times of Celia Cruz on Netflix and I have to admit, I was very impressed with all the actors in the series. Wow! is all I can think of. Each character portrayal was done with gusto and exhausting dramatization of her story. Most impressive was the actress who played Lola Calvo. It's almost as though she studied to play that role for years. I never knew Celia's story, but it was a bittersweet and romantic one. If anything, it's climbing the charts as one of the most romantic true stories of our time. I rarely ever write reviews because life is so time consuming, but I had to make mention of this one. If they could make it in English for Americans to watch without the subtitles I'm sure that everyone would share the same thought. Excellent series. Excellent actors. Excellence! Excellence! Excellence!

I loved this on so many levels...

The story was well written and truly took me everywhere Celia was. I felt as though I was actually in those places, feeling what she felt...

I loved the love between Celia and Pedro, rarely do you see this type of unconditional love last through a lifetime.

The music, the performances were absolutely wonderful, as were the costumes!

Celia Cruz impacted so many people and so many lives. TELEMUNDO THANK YOU FOR CHRONICLING THE LIFE OF CELIA CRUZ! AN ABSOLUTELY MUST WATCH! GREAT JOB!

****Some spoilers***

I watched a few episodes back when it first came out and decided to watch it on Netflix as my next binge show. First and foremost this a biopic telenovela. As such characters and story lines have been embellished or created for drama and entertainment. If you expected a accurate biopic move along. People were upset about the additional characters and story lines taking center stage must understand what medium this show is produced for telenovelas are shown long runs and the main story is sprinkled in to milk the episode#.

That said the production value is superb almost movie-like. Costumes, set designs and such were very nice, the acting was pretty good and they choose people who resembled the real life Celia and Pedro albeit much more attractive as TV shows do.

The music had the Cuban-flavor despite it not being completely accurate as others noted only 3 songs of hers actually being sung in the show, blame Sony for that they own her music catalogue and charged the studio an arm and a leg for the rights.

Overall its really entertaining, beautiful to look at from costumes, sets and actors overall an easy 10/10 as a telenovela, as a TV drama i would say its a 7-8 out of 10.

I have been watching Celia since day 1 and it was great upto they just dismissed Gammy and left us hanging that he was never found or the boat his story was carried on for so many days and then finally he was just cut off and so was Rene, they continued with Mario, Raquel, Lola and her two lovers, of course Celia and Pedro, but they just got rid of the gay couple, (Not cool)! They even kept Nori up to this day and then last night all of a sudden she has a daughter and husband, (No story line on that) Celia's little wanna be son is all of a sudden grown, (what's up with that?) the start of this series was awesome and all of a sudden they just started speeding through everything, including Alberto was cut off, come on dude, you screwed up after you just started speeding through after Gammy, Now Lola's step-father comes back as this reborn manipulating preacher and stupid Lola still falls for it, can she be any more stupid, would really like to know how could you just cut off the gay couple, there is a Gay Latino population here to. don't get me wrong I'm only watching it because I want to see what surprise you have for us at the end and at this point I have a big feeling, I'm going to be disappointed

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

This was one of the worse novelas I have ever watched. It started great but as the ending is near...it is horribly portrayed. Has done no justice for Celia Cruz. Although we all know it is not a based entirely on true events the novela takes a bad turn once the lead actors have been changed and others have not. I think the original actress/actor were excellent. They portrayed Celia and Pedro excellently and we all fell in love with them. Once they changed them that was a big turn off for me and many. They could've used makeup to make them look older like they did with Norry and yesterday her character was changed to a different actress....another big turn off. To date they have left us hanging with Celia's cousin lost at sea. Omg it's just horrible the jumping from one decade to another This novela was so poorly made that the writers should be ashamed because Celia was an icon in the world of music and I would've liked if the novela would've been written in a great manner since it was a portrayal of Celia's life whether some of the events were actual or not. Very disappointed. Piece of crap although I have enjoyed the music since I am a big fan of Celia. Thumbs down all the way.

Some characters turned 45 or older and the others hardly aged. raquel's child was only about 6. pedro's kids were still in high school. the inconsistencies were distracting. the original cast, the younger versions of the characters, particularly carolina gaitan was more enjoyable to watch. good, convincing acting. the mature Lola overdid the fingers over the mouth gestures, like she had to make sure to do the thing that Lola does, all the time! would've given more stars if not for those inconsistencies. Loved the representation of Afro Latins, loved Celia and the bands, salsa, rumba, the rhythm and music ! that's a 10!

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.

I was really into this for the first 50+ episodes, as I thought the "young"/"original" versions of the key characters were great actors...and then they replace half of the characters and age them to their mid 40s, all in one episode. To make it more confusing, they keep some random people the same, and the storyline itself only passes about 2 years max...smh. And then you're stuck trying to decide whether to sit through the next 30 episodes because you just watched 50 of them...and be annoyed the whole time by the character change. Whyyy does this always happen in telenovelas? Am I missing something? Are makeup artists not in the budget??

I am such a big fan of Celia Cruz, I admire the Lady and I was really looking forward to watching this show.

I was watching chapter six, but I couldn't go on. All is wrong, the music, the acting, it's all so fake that it hurts to watch.

It's almost like a cheap "telenovela", oh wait a minute, so, that's what is it?. Pity, so many good ingredients, the characters, the time in history, the revolution, Al Capone, the great National Hotel, the music, the "Malecon", the Santería. I don't get it, with all that how could it go so wrong?

Sorry to my humble point of view is one of the worst shows ever. Please see it for yourself

Celia you deserve better !!!!

I had no idea that this 80 episode series were ever made about Celia who I happened to enjoy on every Fania all Stars concert in Puerto Rico, I really enjoyed the series until the change some of the original cast members later on episode 56, after that it was very difficult for me to continue watching the series so I stop watching it.

I think most people didn't realize what they were getting into when they started watching the show. It wasn't show in the History channel, and it wasn't a biography either. With that in mind, I really liked Celia's story. I watched it on Netflix so I was able to skip most of Lola's stories and all the damn flashbacks (WAY TOO MANY). The characters tried their best to portrait Cuban people, but seriously no one in Cuba says "plata" when talking about money, some barely even tried to have a Cuban accent. There were so many of those little things that just destroy the illusion but overall it was OK.

I give it a 5 because if you cut all the unnecessary plots (Lola's) and flashbacks the show would probably be closer to 40 episodes. The lip sync was also a bit weird at moments (probably edited badly) and the way people got old in the show was really weird and confusing. So my advice if you are considering watching is to skip all the flashbacks and scenes with Lola in them.

I am cuban-american a d my grandparents raised me on Celia Cruz's music. Her musix was about how proud she was if being cuban and how she missed her country. It resonated with my family. So I wasnt happy to see that most actors if not all weren't even cuban. Written horribly. I know how cubans talk since I live in hialeah and I'm surrounded by cubans and talk spanish and it was cringey hearing the horrible dialect and terrible use of our slang. I love Celia Cruz and everything she stood for but this was a caricature of how cubans act and speak