Selena is one of the many musicians that I’ve fallen in love with since I began teaching my students about her, and I’m a little sad that I didn’t check out this documentary until after my 4th graders had finished their Selena unit already. Suffice it to say that Selena y Los Dinos (the doc, not to be confused with the band) only solidified my love for Selena!

While not an incredibly imaginative or experimental doc, Selena y Los Dinos balanced the broad with the minute in diving into Selena’s life, and I especially appreciated the focus on her development as a musician in the comfort of her family. That’s not a point I think I made clear enough to my students, but it’s one of the coolest attributes of her career. The Quintanilla family put all of their eggs into the Selena basket and it paid off; it’s nice to see a celebrity that treated their family right.

Selena’s career was captured in impressive detail, with a slew of home videos and interviews that I had never seen before, and I loved that the Quintanilla family gave such dense, emotional interviews. Docs that rely so heavily on perspective from families can tend to lean too glorifying, but 1) this doc did a good job highlighting the bumps in the road, both professionally and within the family, and 2) if there was any singer who would deserve an honorific posthumous doc, it would be someone pure and amazing like Selena.

Selena y Los Dinos offered a new perspective on Selena’s personal and professional lives and paired it with a ton of fun home videos and great music, though Castro seemed to recycle a couple tracks and performances, which felt a little lazy. In her defense, though, I could watch that final performance at the Astrodome a million times and never get tired of it. This doc didn’t reinvent the wheel, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? I’m game to listen to Selena and watch cute little home videos any day of the week.