Céline (TV Movie 2008) Poster

(2008 TV Movie)

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6/10
Good movie, just not an accurate account
gittelgirl10 May 2008
Warning: 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.
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5/10
3 questions and a comment
Mag-1329 August 2008
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!
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6/10
Big insult for the french career
cooljp-1389219 October 2016
As a Québécois proud of saying that the BIGGEST singer in the world the wonderful and incredible duo Céline and rené are originally from Québec and Céline sang exclusively in french many years before her first English single where does my heart beat now and even after she never got 2 consecutive English record she always showed proudness of her first language and sang in french all her life there is no show that shes been perform in all her life without including french song.

so HOW COME THERE IS NO FRENCH SONG AT ALL IN THE MOVIE OF HER LIFE. HOW COME HER FIRST SINGLE WHEN SHES 12 YEARS OLD IS AN English SONG THAT I NEVER HEARD HER SANG.

she didn't even have any knowledge in English before the age of 17 years old.

i feel insulted and upset
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Impressiuons of CELINE
jpeverill16 September 2008
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!
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6/10
If you're a Celine Dion fan, I highly recommend this biopic.
paulclaassen7 May 2022
So, who doesn't know Celine Dion? But we don't all know her back story. Enjoying her music as much as I do, I was interested to know how her career started.

Coming from a musical family, and her brother having recorded an album, it was Celine's dream, too, to record. A series of events lead to her finally landing a recording contract.

I enjoyed Rene Angelil's story, as well - the man who signed Celine and whom she eventually married. The film also shows us Celine's incredible loyalty and dedication. Christine Ghawi gives a good performance as Celine, and Enrico Colantoni stars as Rene.

If you're a fan of Celine Dion, I highly recommend this TV movie. And if for any reason you're not a fan of her music, 'Celine' still makes for an interesting watch.
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3/10
Celine Dion is French Canadian
c-madge23 May 2010
What a disappointment this movie was. The casting was terrible! There was absolutely no resemblance of the characters to the people they were portraying. Where on earth was the French Canadian connection? Not one accent? We all know where Celine was born and raised and yet her entire heritage was completely missing. It made no sense whatsoever to cast the movie in a way that did not recognize her background. I can understand that whoever backed this movie may have been concerned about too much French Canadian or too much emphasis on the Francophone accent but let's face it, without it the movie bombed anyway.It was a sham. I'm not criticizing the acting - each person would likely be fine in any other roles. I particularly liked Enrico Colantoni as Rene. I'm not surprised the movie wasn't endorsed by Celine Dion. The producers and the director, the casting company were so far off the mark. The time line was off throughout the movie as well. I don't have an ounce of Francophone in me and it made me feel embarrassed for Celine and her family.
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4/10
Not good!
drt-6730411 September 2022
Just goes to show- if you're a celebrity and you don't take the time to write your own biography, then someone else will do it for you! It won't be accurate, but you'll get one.

Not one word of French which was odd and none of them even had an accent! I thought she could barely speak a word of English. To this day she still has a very strong accent. This woman who played her had no discernible accent at all. The sudden blond hair style at the end was a bit off putting and the actress didn't even resemble Celine at all. Pretty young woman tho.

Not sure what was up with Rene's hair. He starts out with a really bad toupee then he's bald. They tried to do details and it was a huge faux pas.

It was a wham bam trip down memory lane.
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9/10
Lots of heart in this movie. Well Done!
achba2 January 2009
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.
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1/10
Unbelievably Bad! Embarrassing!
mcguitar9 July 2008
Warning: Spoilers
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.
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8/10
This movie is not hand-tailored for the typical Céline Dion fan
becomepostal15 November 2021
I strongly appreciated this biopic about Céline Dion the singer. Maybe it's because I don't like her music or her personality, so that I wasn't expecting much from this movie when I started to view it.

The fact that the actors do not look like the real persons is a very good point: whenever a film tries to mimic known figures, the viewer is distracted by any little detail that doesn't match. Here, we don't have to track these unimportant visual details, so we're much involved in the story itself and the psychology of the characters. Also, the songs are not the original versions from Céline Dion, everything has been redone with talent, it's brilliant.

There's a chance a part of the story was romanticised and some mistakes and omissions were done, but I don't care about that. A biopic is not supposed to tell every aspect of every moment in the life of an historical figure. At the end of the movie there is a text that boldly explains that this story is about Céline Dion and that she didn't participate in any way in its production. I find this to be a courageous attitude from the producers, given the number of movies about real people who try to disguise it with the usual warning "any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental" because they just don't want to be sued for public defamation (The Social Network is a famous example).

(Please note that I watched a version dubbed in French for the French public, so that any consideration about erroneous accent was hidden in the version I watched. Also I don't care that the international part of her career was almost eluded, I don't consider Céline Dion to be representative of French culture)

TL;DR This movie is not hand-tailored for the typical Céline Dion fan (and I like that).
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1/10
A film that must be avoided -- AT ALL TIMES. This is not a joke.
dorfus_chickenlips7 September 2008
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.
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5/10
Too Many Mistakes...Possible Spoilers
aerialla20 May 2008
Warning: Spoilers
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.
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2/10
weird...
jlegare3338 February 2009
Warning: Spoilers
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...
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10/10
At last a biography of Celine Dions life shown on screen
david-black-11 May 2007
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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2/10
So many factual errors made this a real pain to watch
sparklies2k16 October 2008
Warning: Spoilers
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.
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10/10
Who cares what others think? A tale of love and achievement
evening19 March 2024
Warning: Spoilers
I didn't expect much when I looked this movie up after viewing a film on my Alaska Airlines flight featuring Celine Dion in a small role.

But the made-for-TV biopic far outshines the original object of my attention ("Love, Again," of 2023).

Here we have the story of the youngest of 14 children in a musical French-Canadian family, whose dad buys an old pub so that clan members can have a place to play and perform. One day they encourage 12-year-old Céline up to the stage...and the rest is history.

Young Céline doesn't do well at her Catholic school ("Joan who?") and is insecure about her looks, but she's another person in front of a crowd. And soon she's packing the Vieux Baril.

By grit and determination, an older brother snags an interview with successful manager René Angélil. And though he's at first skeptical about the pig-tailed, ruffly preteen -- lucky nickle in her shoe -- that's out the window when he hears her sing.

Although Jodelle Ferland as young Céline and Christine Ghawi as the grown-up diva don't resemble the real-life phenom, both do exceptionally well in their roles, as does Enrico Colantoni as René, the 26-years-older, straight-talking industry man who deals not in acts but phenomena. A scene in which he throws his usual caution aside to dance with Celine is great -- just too short.

Also good here are Louise Pitre as Celine's protective mom and Peter MacNeill as her caring and prescient father. How this hard-working couple managed to raise such a creative family boggles the mind. We see here how Celine grew up in hand-me-downs ("it's new to you").

Celine in her present incarnation is known for her love of clothes, and in this film we observe how she early on starts to build a shoe collection.

"I never want to be poor again," she tells René .

The voice behind "Beauty and the Beast" and "My Heart Will Go On" may inspire many through this film. Brava!
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2/10
Sadly disappointed in this movie of my favourite Canadian singer
tinalgale5 September 2023
As a Canadian, I was extremely disappointed right from the beginning. Celine is a francophone and only much later did she learn to speak and sing in English and this wasn't represented here. They missed her charming French-Canadian accent also.

I did not particularly care for the singing whatsoever as this actress seemed to try too hard and sang with far too much vibrato. She almost looked angry when singing 'My Heart Will Go On' at the end, which came on quickly without alot of screenwriting in between. It was awful. Neither the voices nor the appearances of Celine at varying ages, by the chosen actresses, reflect or were representative of our beautiful and incredibly talented Celine at all, no disrespect. These actresses thrmeselves were lovely but poorly matched for this movie, as was René initially. As much as I dislike lip syncing, I would have much preferred it this time, without a second thought.

There is only one Celine and I expected to see so much more than the poor singing and acting and less than stellar quality overall in this movie, sorry. I don't think I've ever been so critical when reviewing any movie, to be frank. I stayed up until 3:30 am to watch it but should have gone to bed instead as actually that hard to watch. Too much was missing throughout and in my opinion, it was all just thrown together quickly without much thought and the respect that Celine, René and her family deserved.

I do not recommend this movie at all. Wait for a different one or watch any of the plentiful YouTube videos of her story, interviews and concerts with behind the scenes, etc. As they are much more enjoyable to view. Hope this makes some sense as it is now nearly 4am and I'm beyond ready for my bed; the one I should have gone to instead of spending time with this one.
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1/10
Waist of time.
otej-6982815 September 2023
She suffered a number of accidents as a young child, including an incident at five years old when she was struck by a car as her father and brother Clément looked on. She was hospitalized briefly with a concussion. By 1992, Unison, Celine Dion, and numerous high-profile media appearances had propelled Dion to superstardom in North America. She had achieved one of her main objectives: wedging her way into the. Apart from her commercial success, there were also changes in her personal life, as Angélil, who was 26 years her senior, transitioned from manager to lover. However, the relationship was kept a secret as they both feared the public would find it inappropriate.
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2/10
Painful to watch
stephaniecox9 December 2022
If you're a true Céline fan, this movie is hard to watch. Low budget and bad acting. None of the actors, especially Céline, look like the real people. I don't know why they couldn't find anyone who looks like Céline at all. There are drag queens who look more like Celine than these girls in the movie. Celine also has an accent and speaks French. No one in this movie took note of that. It's all Americanized. The singing is way off, I wish they would have lip synced it. The actors tried but it's still pretty bad. I'm in the middle of watching it and just want it to end. I've made it this far so I'm going to see it through. The movie is pretty cheesy and not accurate.
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1/10
Awful
belld-5942110 August 2023
I was so hoping to enjoy this film but it was terrible. Did not seem factually accurate at all from the many interviews I have seen over the years with Celine. No French anywhere even though everyone knows she's French Canadian and did not speak let alone sing in English for years. Lip syncing was atrocious. Seemed to skip over many "major" milestones throughout her early career. It was such a disappointment to me as a casual fan of Celine's I can't imagine what it was like for diehards that know her story. None of this movie was believable. I would not recommend this movie to anyone especially a Canadian fan because it's not accurate at all.
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All the people in the world....
302FordGirl4 November 2022
And could not find ANY actresses that resemble Celine at any age in her life? The child looks like one that belongs in a horror movie, not trying to put her down but she doesn't look like Celine as a child whatsoever. The Tina actress should have turned down the role out of respect to Celine.

I don't understand how this was produced and people thought this was acceptable?

It's like making a movie about George Clooneys life and casting Carrot Top to play George. I mean, they look pretty similar, right? Almost twins. Doppelgängers.

How is this allowed? Seriously?

Everyone involved in making this movie should never brag to anyone about that because they will be forced to lie to you and say "it's great". How dare you put anyone in that position.
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