Carmen: A Hip Hopera (2001)

Wonderful character development!

It is a performances centric movie

Absolutely Fantastic

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

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'.

Hi,I watched this movie and thought it was so romantic but it still wasn't a chick flick.Beyonce played her part and over of course her singing was awesome,I could just see all this conflict happening in real life.Mekkhi did a great job too ! Because we understand how a guy could fall for THAT GIRL !

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.

"Carmen: A Hip Hopera" , ranks with some of the "worst" movies ever made!!! Inadequate acting, and the waste of a talented director such as Mr. Robert Townsend. Bizet's "Carmen", and Preminger's "Carmen Jones" were excellent!!! The "third time is a charm", is not the case with "Carmen: A Hip Hopera!!!!! V.King