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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :- Good movie, just not an accurate account, 10 May 2008 Author: gittelgirl from United States
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
I enjoyed this movie, as TV movies go. There are no shocking spoilers; I think most people know the story of Celine's rise to fame and fortune and her relationship with Rene Angelil. We see Celine as a little girl, performing for her family, and at her brother's wedding. Once Rene hears her sing, he is willing to risk his marriage and finances to make her a star. Celine grows up and ends up having to hide her romantic relationship with Rene. Where I felt the producers took license with her actual life time line began with the moment she and Rene speak with the writer of "My Heart Will Go On", the theme song from the movie "Titanic". While it is true that Celine took this song and the movie to amazing heights, the movie suddenly crunches this event and the occurrence of their marriage and birth of their son in to a very short period of time. I think it would have better served viewers to have an explanation of events that occurred after that period of time. Overall, though, it is fairly well acted, and Enrico Colantoni looks amazingly like Rene Angelil.
5 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :- Lots of heart in this movie. Well Done!, 2 January 2009 Author: achba from United States
It has always been much easier to criticize things than to build them. I find the degree to which some have criticized this film to be amazing . I thought the film quite good. You cannot expect real people to be captured exactly in film, as exact clones do not exist, and all biographical films are by necessity small sketches, as time is so short. This is a very warm story about a great family and a girl who worked her butt off and captured a dream. Perhaps it would have been more technically accurate to tell the story in French, as the first half of her career was all in French, but then 95% of her fans would not understand it. The actors did a marvelous job of showing us this family. Read the book for detail. It is good, and it was written in French, so you can get the detail there. It would be sad to miss this story. It makes your heart glad.
3 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :- Too Many Mistakes...Possible Spoilers, 20 May 2008 Author: aerialla from United States
This is coming from a Celine Dion fan since 1990 and her first US album.The actress playing Celine in the later years Christine Ghawi did do a fantastic job of portraying Celine as did Erico Colantoni playing Rene Angelil. These actors jobs were the only thing right and worth seeing.It was obvious that the writers of this did not do enough research into Celine's life. All it would have required is reading her autobiography. The ending was very rushed leaving out huge gaps in her career and jumbling so much together that it left me shaking my head. Not to mention some very important details that were either left on the cutting room floor or omitted completely. It is no wonder why this movie was This movie is really geared more toward a casual fan. For them it would be an interesting watch just to really see where she started from.unauthorized by Celine.For true Celine fans I would actually say give this movie a pass. There are just too many discrepancies to fully enjoy the movie without wanting to yell the errors at the TV.
4 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :- Impressiuons of CELINE, 16 September 2008 Author: jpeverill from United States
This film is a disaster, especially if you are a true fan of Celine. Virtually none of the people presented really look like their real-life counterparts. The Dion family is almost completely misrepresented. The mother looks like an upper-middle class suburbanite. Most distressing are the vocal renditions, not only missing the mark in duplicating what was actually there, but doing it in a way that is hardly worthy of comparison to the original, both as a little girl and as a star. I hope they paid Celine plenty for this joke. It will serve her poorly as a memento. I especially disliked the songs done as a teenager. Some of them are exceptional, but not these. Unfortunately, this may keep people from going back and actually listening to the originals, which were great. Finally, her French is almost completely overlooked. Most of her early songs especially were in French. She didn't even know any English until she was about 14/15. Her Anglo-style persona just isn't her!
4 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :- 3 questions and a comment, 29 August 2008 Author: Mag-13 from northern Virginia
I liked it. It got me thinking; otherwise, I wouldn't be writing here. I fell asleep for a few minutes(I was tired; the movie didn't bore me) and suddenly Rene's really bad toupee was replaced with a bald head. What made him take the toupee off? Second question: it says on his bio that Rene married and divorced twice before Celine, not once. Does Celine's mother ever mention that in the movie? Third: I thought the voice-over singer was better than Celine, who's sort of nasaly like Barbara Streisand. Who is Trish O'Brien? I can't find her online.And now a comment: I love Enrico Colantoni, who played Rene. No matter who he plays, a sleepy lovability surrounds him. He's totally hot in Just Shoot Me!
4 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :- Unbelievably Bad! Embarrassing!, 9 July 2008 Author: mcguitar from United States
Wow, I've seen some paint-by-the-numbers biopics, but this one is the absolute worst. No character development, just endless clichés. At every big moment in her career, she jumps into Rene's arms and says "Oh Rene, you are so amazing!" But Rene got even worse lines. I felt so bad for the actors! Also, quite strange that a biopic of one of the most famous people in the world would portray her as having no accent. I am not a fan of her god-awful music, but even I know she has a thick French-Canadian accent. I saw her on Larry King and found her to be very engaging, down to earth and funny. None of that comes through in the film, where she is just a bland singer worried about her career.The good news ... I love bad movies, and this one is hysterically bad.
2 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :- weird..., 8 February 2009 Author: jlegare333 from Canada
First of all, I have nothing against Americans. But I really think a bio about Céline should be done with quebecer actors, and done in french, her original language. Actually, it should be done in french AND English because it's the two languages she uses, but mainly in french, with Quebec accent. English speakers would use subtitles. It's the only way you can truly represent their reality. She and René would not interact in English in a dialog between themselves.Also, they did not present any of her songs in french, which was her career until she was 20. But I give the benefit of the doubt to the producers because I heard they didn't earned the rights for her early songs. She is an international star, but you can't get pass her origins. I don't know what to think about interpretation. You don't want to fall in caricature, but it did not seem like her. It wasn't HER voice. The characters not looking alike didn't help. (The only time I thought there was a resemblance was when she opened the door in red(after her one-year break), but that was it. Everything was weird, her sisters were not portrayed nicely. (They laugh at her, despise her a bit) We know Céline has a very united family, I don't think her sisters would have said something like this.The time line is confused. She returned when she was 18, not left. She and René married December 17th, 1994, Titanic got out in 1997. I surely doubt they discussed about the song 4 years before. Funny detail, they made her mom thin and her dad chubbier when it's the opposite. Her dad was as thin as a pipe.I still liked it a little because I like everything done about Céline, but I understand why it was unauthorized...
3 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :- So many factual errors made this a real pain to watch, 6 October 2008 Author: sparklies2k1 from Canada
I understand this is the "American" version of her career, but having been a fan during her early years, I couldn't help but feel insulted by the complete lack of respect towards her French material (which is entirely missing in favor of some new material arranged as if they were rejects from mid 90s recordings) and the people involved in her pre-Unison years. Christopher Neal must be pretty mad that his instrumental work on "Where does my heart beat now" was attributed to David Foster - Neil is quite responsible for the sound that helped Celine breaking in the English market at that time (only one of the Foster tracks off Unison actually made it into single form in Canada and it was the fifth). And who can forget Luc Plamondon before that who agreed to write edgier material for her during her Incognito years but was apparently not worthy of a mention.Why show them if people don't know them? Well, maybe people would know them if revisionist shows like this would stop rewriting history in favor of household names.In any case, I'm sure the point was just to make little English girls dream when watching this... but it sure is a slap in the face of the whole French fan-base who carried her to during all these early years.
3 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :- A film that must be avoided -- AT ALL TIMES. This is not a joke., 7 September 2008 Author: dorfus_chickenlips from Cyprus
Dreadful, horrible, embarrassing to watch, bad (not even funny bad), chronologically incorrect, the actors' performances are much worse than terrible (the film reminded me of a Mexican-dubbed soap opera), there's no mention of important events in both her life and career (the death of her niece Karine, who died in Celine's arms; her father's death; winning Academy Awards in 1992 and 1998, and so on). Elaborating on these points would be, in fact, pointless. Additionally, I'm ashamed to actually say that I watched such an awful film. The ONLY good thing about this film, is that Christine Ghawi does, to some extent, look like Celine Dion. Personally, I cannot see the reason of this film's being. And that's saying a lot, taking into account that I'm a Celine Dion fan.
10 out of 32 people found the following comment useful :- At last a biography of Celine Dions life shown on screen, 1 May 2007 Author: david-black-1 from United Kingdom
This is the life story of Celine Dion from growing up in Charlemagne a small Provence of Quebec. Watching her family make music she was inspired to sing and be the centre of attention dropping out of school at a young age and singing live for the first time at the age of 5 at her brothers wedding.This film chronicles her life as a success in Quebec and rising to the big time,her first big hit in France to moving on and winning the 1988 eurovision song contest. The following years sees the release of her her first single and in 1990 her 3 million selling Unison album. This film also shows her successful move up the showbiz ladder. Having most of her English albums sell over 10 million copies (2 of which sold over 32 million copies each eventually selling 250 million albums and singles to becoming a renowned las Vegas show girl.This film is definitely one to look out for.
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