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Celia (2015)
A "Could had been excellent" production ends just being "Mediocre."
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.