Watch Carmen: A Hip Hopera For Free

Too much of everything

Film Perfection

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Well, I'm a huge fan of Beyonce Knowles; but, omg; this is Cop Rock just a few years later. Studied classic voice for 8 years, and was not expecting that type of quality; but, the situations where each character breaks into "song", is embarrassing. It's much like the feeling I had when as a college student I watched Steven Bochco's COP ROCK; but this is worse; did this even get an airing on broadcast TV? Poor Beyonce; Thank God she redeemed her self somewhat in "Dreamgirls." one star for trying to being creative; Beyonce is very hot in this; even for a gay guy, I find her exuding natural sexuality more than most of the vanilla, white anorexic actresses today. I hope she didn't put this on her resume'.

First of all I want to state that I have seen this movie once in my life. I could only bare to see it once for the fact that Beyonce Knowles has been my Role Model for the past 6 years. Ever since the very first time I heard her voice on the radio, I had become to love it. For the fact that I want to be a famous singer when I grow up, Beyonce Knowles had always been who I had looked up too. She was one of the few celebrities who had managed to stay out of negative media SUCCESSFULLY. I had never heard of her becoming intoxicated and out of control, their was never any provocative statements being said, and she was never heard of as being in a two day relationship. Beyonce Knowles had always been a positive person in my life, and her music was my escape to the realities of existence. Middle School & High School: I couldn't have made/been making it through these years if it were not for her music brightening my day.You can call me bias, I don't mind. I am only saying the way I feel. : ) Then, this movie came out, and for me it was a modern-day Selena remake. If you haven't seen the movie Selena, I highly recommend you to watch it. The two are quite similar. Anyways, Beyonce Knowles was only pursuing her dreams in the music industry. This was the simple well-known fact of how hard it was to "make it" in this industry. Now, things aren't as tough, and if your name is well-known, you can have a record deal in a matter of 2 weeks. IF not, then you have to start climbing the ladder. Once you have reached the middle of that ladder, you have to be careful not to fall. After this, if you keep on pursuing your dreams then you will succeed to the top of the ladder. In the movie, Beyonce Knowles had died before her life-long dreams had been reached.I cried for the next hour after watching Carmen: A Hip-Hopera. I couldn't explain the way I had felt for Beyonce's character, Carmen. And I had soon realized that I would try my hardest and never give up to reach my dreams.In reality:: I am 16 years old and I still have not yet received any type of record deal. I live in a small town, so that only makes it ten times harder. Yet, I still know that I have the rest of my life to become a singer if that is what I want out of my life, and it most certainly is. I know that I must never give up on my dreams, until the good Lord takes me home.May I just add one last thing: Beyonce emerged from a trio group {which was first a foursome, but they SURVIVED the split.} and Destiny's Child had Grammy's and the Billboard under their belt. Then Beyonce Knowles, Kelly Rowland, and Michelle Williams all went solo. Michelle chose Gospel while Beyonce and KElly chose R&B. The record label Destiny's Child had signed with, was owned by Beyonce's manager, her very own father and backbone support, Matthew Knowles. Now, Beyonce has overwhelmed the media with her two solo albums, her appearance in two movies, The Fighting Temptations and The Pink Panther, along with her performances in this movie and soon coming to theaters, Dreamgirls.; D She did it, she raised above the negativity and made her dreams come true. You may disagree, but I know that I can do that too. This movie gave me nothing but encouragement. = D Thank you for listening!! Feel free to comment!!

I'm in my 60's and I live far from any exposure to African-American culture. I always found Rap to be pretty annoying. But I stumbled across this on cable, and I really liked it. It helps that "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" is one of my all-time favorite films, and this had a very similar flavor. One refreshing feature of the film was the authenticity of the language. It always irritates me to see black kids in the ghetto (movie version) speaking something that sounds too close to acting-school English. The cast of this fiom, apparently, did not consist of trained actors who enunciated clearly in a ghetto-esque parody, but people who live and talk in that culture all the time, and it sounded real. At the same time, it was not so steeped in arcane under-culture talk that I could not understand it. So, 5 stars out of 5 for overcoming the language problem that mainstream films are so challenged by. I'd have liked more music---quite a bit of the dialogue was spoken in normal conversation---a lot more could have been put to music, since the commitment had already been made to use that device. I think the pace of the musicalized dialogue was very, very well done in terms of matching body language. Nobody seemed uncomfortable with the exchanges, or impatient for the imposed rhythm to catch up with the reaction. A neat job. Overall, this is a finely-tuned, slick vehicle that works. Whatever you think of African Americans or their music or their culture, this is a nice film that will perhaps endear you to this charming entourage.

I enjoyed this, although it was too short to cover the story well enough. I thought Beyonce & Mekhi were both great, and Mos played a good villain. As long as you don't expect a true remake of the opera, you should enjoy it.