SOURCE: "Flawed 'La Bamba'," in Rolling Stone, Issue 506, August 16, 1987, p. 13.

In the following film review of La Bamba, DeCurtis criticizes Valdez for artificially inflating the already powerful story of Valens's life.

A variety of problems plagues La Bamba, the new film about the life of Ritchie Valens, the Mexican American rocker who was killed at age seventeen in the 1959 plane crash that also took the lives of Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. Casting in the major roles is the movie's most obvious problem. Newcomer Lou Diamond Phillips is likeable but far from riveting as Valens, while Danielle von Zerneck, who plays Valens's girlfriend and the inspiration for his hit "Donna," is almost laughably blank. In contrast, Rosana De Soto and Esai Morales, as Valens's mother and half brother, give performances that are operatic in their histrionic excess.

But the movie's most damning flaw is in its handling...