"Céline" Review - Written by Freelance

Year: 2008
Director: Jeff Woolnough
Cast: Christine Ghawi, Enrico Colantoni, Jodelle Ferland
MPAA: PG
Studio: Monarch Home Video/CBC
Rating: * out of *****

Canada is such a copasetic country. It has beautiful forestlands and majestic mountain valleys that its consumer whore, gun toting, overly polluting neighbor is quickly losing. Not to mention its contribution it has made to entertainment: John Candy, Neil Young, Ryan Gosling, Wolverine, the entire cast of Kids in the Hall. God Bless you, Canada! Unfortunately, with the good we have the bad. Celine Dion has been greatly praised for her music. She has also been the butt of a lot of jokes directed towards Canada. I for one say, “Don’t blame Canada, blame Dion!”

We all know her music. Especially if you’ve been to a middle school mixer with a karaoke machine during the years 1996-1999. Her smooth, lovey-dovey, feel good, doctor’s office music has entertained few and left the rest of us wincing in pain.
The movie, Céline, tells us the story of the Canadian songstress that we have come to know. Starting with her early years living in Charlemagne, Quebec, with her large and impoverished family, Céline dealt with several emotional and social pains in her young life. Being the youngest sibling of fourteen children, she was always told by her older sisters that she was the mistake of the family. She was picked on at the Roman Catholic school that she went to, by others who made fun of her facial defects.

This film hits on every single bit of known knowledge… you can easily look all of this stuff up on wikipedia. Everything from: How she was hit by a car at a young age, her using her dad’s punching bag, her musically influenced family, how she met René Angélil, her huge successes with the music industry. I could easily bore you to death with rattling on about this stuff. I won’t though! I’ll skip to the meat. Was this an enjoyable movie?

No. Reason why. The lack of believability. Don’t get me wrong, I believe there is a woman named Céline Dion, she’s very musically famous, and she married her manager who is twenty-six years her senior. It is noted (not in the movie, though) that Céline did not learn to speak English fluently until 1989. The film gives us the pretense that she and her entire family have always spoken English. There is not even an attempt of the botched French accent. Thinking, this film was likely created by some weak American movie production company, while ignorantly hiring a bunch of American actors for a bio pic on a Canadian Icon. To my surprise, when the credits began to roll, this was done by Monarch Home Video and the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). WTF! I must mention that Dion, herself was not part of or even consulted for this movie.

Aside from the odd logistics, a good portion of the acting is atrocious. There were times I felt a stomach-churning nostalgia to my high school theater days. Enrico Colantoni was enjoyable in his performance. Unfortunately, It lacked a clear portrayal of René Angélil, both physically and (what I have seen of him through media) personality. The direction by Jeff Woolnough (Bones, Battlestar Galactica, NCIS) seemed to be aiming for nothing higher than a local theater community production. Even though I am not a fan of her music, the performances done by Jodelle Ferland (young Celine) and Christine Ghawi (present day Celine) were well done. Ghawi actually does a pretty decent job in capturing Celine’s show-boatiness as a performer.

Overall, This is not a show people will feel overly compelled to catch. I’m still kind of wondering why I volunteered for it. Nonetheless, lovers of her music might watch this. For others like myself, the view of it on display at Blockbuster will cause an small eruption of laughter, as I pass it and pick up a copy of Lost Boys: The Tribe.