Selena y Los Dinos: A Family Legacy Movie Review 2025
An excellent tribute to the life and legacy of the famous singer who left too soon, Selena y Los Dinos provides countless family photos, videos, and interviews to let people know the real woman behind the voice.
Having grown up in Chicago in the 80s and 90s and having never been exposed to specific Latin artists at the time, I was not introduced to Selena until the movie about her life was released in 1997. I had heard the hit song “I Could Fall In Love” on the radio, of course, but in a wave of Debbie Gibson and Tiffany pop songs, I didn’t know who it belonged to. To this day, I wish that I’d gotten to know more about the young woman behind the voice during her lifetime.
Selena y Los Dinos is a documentary about the life of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, a Tejano music superstar who had plans to enter the English market just before her death in 1995. This film covers her early life, family, career, and marriage, allowing the audience to get to know her in ways that have not been available before.
Executive produced by her brother, A.B. Quintanilla, and sister, Suzette Quintanilla, and directed by Isabel Castro, this film compiles hundreds of family photos, home videos, and interviews with the closest people in her life. Through all of it, you can see her heart and soul in addition to a smile that radiates like sunshine. I know that sounds flowery, but it’s actually true, just watch the first 30 seconds of the film.
There are many fantastic moments covered here, but one stuck out to me like a sore thumb. Selena spoke Spanish fluently as a teen and adult! The fictional movie implied that she did not speak Spanish (her first language was English) and that she stumbled through interactions in the language, speaking a sort of Spanglish, but her real life tells it differently. Interview after interview has her speaking fluently in Spanish, later speaking to her family and band in English with a southern drawl.
This film takes you through her early life, when her father first discovered that she could sing, through the family performances at the restaurant they owned, and then, later, on the road. You get to see Big Bertha, the Selena y Los Dinos tour bus, and meet all of the Dinos – her family members and band. The love emanating through them is still palpable.
What this film makes clear is that Selena touched people when she performed and through her music, but her songs and legacy still reach people today. They have opened a Selena Museum in Corpus Christi, where you can see various awards, outfits she performed in and designed, and other memorabilia. There is a very cool shot of her father sitting at a desk working as all of the museum patrons walk by.
Selena’s family and band members were her friends, and while I would have loved to know a little more about what all of her loved ones are doing now, this film is clearly focused on Selena and her legacy. There is only a short time dedicated to the coverage of her death, which is good. What happened is heartbreaking, and the way they spoke about it made me cry, but she was so much more than that moment, and she deserves to have all of her story told. They did a really good job doing that here. You’ll enjoy it.
Runtime: 117 minutes
Motion Picture Rating: PG
Languages Spoken In The Film: English and Spanish with English subtitles
Should You Watch It? Yes
Did I Cry? Yes, I did
My Rating: 4.25/5 Stars
Available: Free on Netflix
