Thought it was impossible to make the story of a drug-addicted musical icon boring? You were wrong. 

A quick rundown of the main points in the life of salsa pioneer Hector Lavoe: born in Puerto Rico but was basically disowned by his father for moving to New York, became an overnight musical icon in the Latin community, had multiple children with multiple mothers, got addicted to heroin, tried to commit suicide by jumping off a 9th floor hotel balcony and lived, lost his 17-year-old son when he was accidentally shot and killed by a friend, his house burned down, and he died of AIDS.

Yet somehow the makers of his biopic, this weekend's El Cantante, succeeded in the most impressive of feats: they made his story boring.

Starring Latin mega-star musician Marc Anthony as Lavoe and Jennifer Lopez as his rather caustic wife, Puchi, El Cantante spans decades--from Lavoe's rise to fame in the '60s and '70s to his struggles with drugs and ultimate death in 1993. The jumps through time are anchored by a black-and-white, documentary-style recreation of an interview given by Lavoe's widow years after his death.

The notion of doing a Hector Lavoe biopic was first conceived by Lavoe's road manager, David Maldonado. A script made it to Jennifer Lopez in 2001, and she decided it needed to be the first project for her company, Nuyorican Productions. Now married to each other, Lopez approached Anthony about playing the lead role before they were together--so casting them together wasn't a ploy to play upon their status as a real-life couple. And it is clear that Anthony was the right choice for the part. His acting is surprisingly quite subtle and I find it hard to imagine someone else better suited to handle performing all of Lavoe's songs.

I suspect some people are going to take issue with J-Lo's performance, but (with the exception of the clown-like age makeup they put on her for the interview segments) I thought she was fine. My problems with the movie--and they are many--lie elsewhere--mostly, echoing what I said earlier, in the fact that the overall effect of the movie is that it is boring.

While Cuban director Leon Ichaso (Piñero) may have bring an insider's understanding of the Latin culture and his personal experience as a Lavoe to the project, his actual directing skills leave something to be desired. Close-ups at insignificant moments and fancy, fast camera work attempt to impose tension where none exists. And numerous, lengthy set pieces of musical performances make the most spectacular thing about Lavoe--his musical talent--increasingly dull.

It's not all Ichaso's fault--at least as a director. The script, which he wrote with David Darmstaeder and Todd Bello, is a wreck. Significant aspects of Lavoe's life, such as his affairs and the existence of the child he had out of wedlock, for just two examples, are virtually buried--touched upon obscurely and then never picked up again--but then referred to later.

And Lavoe's character, if possible, is woefully underwritten. Although tales of the man himself paint him as charismatic and ultimately loveable, the Lavoe we see in the movie basically floats around from situation to situation, often at Puchi's whim, as exciting as a piece of furniture. This isn't Anthony's fault--as I said before, he seems to do a terrific job with what he's given. The thing is, the character doesn't have that much to say or do.

I mean, yes, he does lots of drugs and fights with his wife and becomes a salsa superstar, but somehow the film makes him appear to fade into the scenery, dwarfed by J-Lo's giant, bodacious shadow. Although the film may try to give some back story, it fails miserably at effectively conveying how or why Lavoe got so involved in drugs. In fact, you see him smoking his first joint and getting horribly sick and saying he'll never do it again. The next thing you know, Puchi's scooping cocaine into his nose and picking him up at shooting galleries. Anyone interesting in showing us how he gets from Point A to Point B? Perhaps a little moment that shows why he makes these crucial decisions that seem so out of the character they labored to set up?

We even see his father forbidding him as a young man to go to New York. Next? Hector in New York. From this we are supposed to garner that having your father tell you that and then doing it anyway is a great stressor. Lovely. Perhaps you might like to show us him being stressed about it. Just a suggestion. Yet every time the movie starts go build any sort of tension, we immediately cut away from the scene. The result is a movie that utterly lacks conflict or momentum--two rather essential elements.

Biopics about talented musicians with drug problems are well-trodden territory, so if you're going to enter the already crowded playing field, you've got to have your game on. And El Cantante is simply so much less compelling than predecessors like Walk the Line and Ray that it can hardly be put in the same category as them.

What did I learn from El Cantante (aside from don't share needles or jump out windows, that is)? That I like the music of Hector Lavoe, and Marc Anthony's renditions are lovely. In fact, I'll probably buy the soundtrack. But I don't feel like I know much about the man himself at all, which is pretty bad after watching the story of his lfie for two hours.

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