Have you ever heard of Carlos Santana, the musician widely known as a guitarist and singer? The new documentary, Carlos, combines old and new footage to tell his story as he navigates many elements of his life, not just his career. With so much excellent footage and informative narration, Carlos is a must-see for everyone, especially the musically inclined.

Carlos follows legendary guitarist Carlos Santana as he starts off playing ukulele with his family and ends up producing music that we know today. From leaving his job, sacrificing the major support system of his family to pursue his passion, to performing at Woodstock with hundreds of thousands of people in the audience, to the band eventually breaking up, the story of Carlos Santana is explored. While the primary focus of this film is on Santana's career and the obstacles he faced there, it also touches on how his decisions and his career have affected his family life.

The structure of Carlos is part of what makes this film so informative and easy to follow. The documentary follows his life in chronological order, and includes a variety of footage that helps tell his story clearly. For the early parts of his life Carlos Santana narrates as photographs and videos of his beginnings with family and performances are shown on screen. Newer interviews define more current parts of his life. For fans of Carlos's music or anyone interested in creating music, the behind-the-scenes footage of his music is being produced is sure to be an attention-grabber. Hearing Carlos's own thoughts about events of his life makes the film very interesting, as they provide a depth and understanding to the actions he took and why he took them. While the structure provides a lot of information, it occasionally leads to losing focus or being overwhelmed. However, Santana's humorous narration as well as the editing of new and old footage prevents being disinterested for very long.

The theme of Carlos is to never give up. Pursuing your dreams and your interests is so important, and dreams really can come true if you put your mind to them and work hard. Santana also reminds us of the importance of keeping in touch with loved ones and maintaining positive relationships no matter what your personal goals are. The film does contain some profanity and other mature content.

I give Carlos 4 out of 5 stars and recommend it for ages 12 to 18, plus adults. You can watch Carlos in theaters beginning September 29, 2023. By Kyla C., KIDS FIRST!

I saw Carlos, starring Carlos Santana-yep the musician.

This is a documentary film about Carlos Santana and it covers his life from when he was a child. It's told by Carlos and contains concert footage as well as a lot of never before seen videos from his early years. His father played a violin so that was Carlos' first instrument he played before gravitating to the guitar. There is even a recording of him playing guitar around the age of 14. His financial hardships, his parents, his wives and children, even his addictions are covered. I am a fan and I still learned things I didn't know, such as his performance at Woodstock and the details around it-I'm talking about the snake incident. It covers his time with a guru and how his sisters and parents reacted. If you are a fan, you should enjoy this film.

It's rated R for language and drug content and has a running time of 1 hour & 27 minutes.

I would buy this one on Blu_Ray.