Her new gig at Caesars makes no such pretensions: it is a Celine concert and nothing more. That's both a good thing and a bad thing, ultimately.

She sounds amazing. I'm hard pressed to think of anyone who has as pure, clear, and perfect a voice as Celine Dion. When she soars into one of her signature power ballads like "All By Myself" or "The Power of Love," she proves that she is, simply, one of the best singers in the entire world.

Here, she is backed by a remarkable 31-piece orchestra and the drama of it all fits her like a glove. "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" is downright epic in scope with her voice and the orchestration blending into something worthy of a standing ovation.

The problem with this particular concert is one of pacing and content.

Although best known for her heart-tugging slow songs, Celine Dion has a wide catalogue of up-tempo hits including "I Drove All Night" and "You and I" to name a couple. But other than hearing the former underscoring an opening video montage, the faster stuff is not included in for most of this show. Instead, it is one slow or, at best, mid-tempo song after another including covers of songs by everyone from Michael Jackson to Ella Fitzgerald to Janis Ian.

Hardcore fans may be disappointed that she only does a handful of her own music, but I actually don't have a problem with that. My issue is that every song she picked - "Man in the Mirror," "At Seventeen," "Goldfinger" - were all such down-tempo exercises that by the time she finally broke into "Love Can Move Mountains," some 90 minutes into the show, the audience seemed almost visibly relieved.

There are a few odd moments as well. The aforementioned "Goldfinger" came in an ill-fitting tribute to James Bond music that came with no explanation as to why it was there or what the music meant to her. The virtual duet with Steve Wonder on his 1985 hit "Overjoyed," using a hologram of the singer, falls flat with the technology sucking all the energy out of Wonder's performance.

Another hologram was used on a duet of James Ingram's "How Do You Keep the Music Playing" where Celine sings the heartfelt love song to... herself. Yes, Celine sings live with a hologram of herself on lines like "If we can be the best of lovers, yet be the best of friends." The idea of her singing a duet with herself is kind of cool - who else can match her pipes? - but this was the wrong song for it.

Throughout it all, she mostly strikes dramatic poses and occasionally walks across the massive stage, occasionally chatting up the audience with her earnest patter. Sleepy is the best word I could come up with to describe it.

The liveliest moments in the show come courtesy of the back-up singers and orchestra members during the many breaks for Celine's costume changes. A string trio rips through several Michael Jackson songs including "Smooth Criminal" and "Billie Jean" and they brought down the house.

It's likely over the next three years of her residency at Caesars Palace that the show will evolve as new numbers are added. Let's just hope that if they are, the songs have a bit more energy to them.

If I'm being hard on Celine, it's because we always are on the ones we love. It's impossible not to love Celine Dion, even in a show like this that underserves her remarkable talent.