Review: "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody" Is a Lovable Mess

By: Christopher James

No one loves their cliches more than the biopic genre. However, no music biopic has blown through every cliche with such quick and reckless abandon as Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody. That’s not necessarily an insult.

Few pop culture icons loom as large as Whitney Houston, “The Voice,” who holds the record for seven consecutive number one singles atop the Billboard Top 100. By virtue of also being a modern celebrity, most people have some concept of Houston. Thus, the biopic spends less time educating people on who Whitney Houston is. In fact, it’s a crash course through her Wikipedia. Unfortunately, it misses out on her soul and motivation - what drove Whitney Houston from the biggest star in the world to death at 48?

The simple answer the movie gives is drugs, but it never decides to dig deeper.

We first meet Whitney Houston (Naomi Ackie) as a defiant teenager adding runs and vocal flourishes to the gospel songs her mother, Cissy Houston (Tamara Tunie) is teaching. Cissy is a singer herself and Whitney wants to follow in her footsteps, even hoping to reach the heights of family friends Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick. 

Whitney Houston's iconic National Anthem performance is one of many musical moments brought to life in this film.After one powerhouse performance with her mother, Whitney catches the eye of producer Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci), who signs her to Arista Records. She became an overnight success with her bestselling debut album. However, as par for the course for any biopic, success has its own set of challenges.

From here, the movie picks up and drops story threads like its browsing Saks Fifth Avenue. There’s some conflict where Whitney responds to criticism that she’s “not black enough,” but that is dropped just as soon as it's introduced. Much of the early movie is spent with Whitney’s female lover, Robyn (Nafessa Williams), who soon becomes her executive assistant. Their relationship feels lived-in, but once she meets Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders), Robyn all but disappears. When Robyn reappears any conflict around their romantic relationship has vanished. Though a major part of her tabloid persona, Bobby Brown is rarely seen and is just a one-note obstruction when he is.

Though incomplete, the relationship between Whitney (Naomi Ackie) and Robyn (Nafessa Williams) represents some of the strongest moments in the biopic.There’s one major cliche that director Kasi Lemmons sidesteps. The film is not self-serious or pitying of Whitney Houston. Her drug use is clumsily set up midway through the movie; five minutes later Whitney has hit rock bottom. If someone were trying to learn what it was like to follow Whitney Houston for decades, this would not be the right film introduction. For fans, it’s a perfectly sloppy vehicle. It celebrates and elevates her, spending more time with her iconic performances, fun idiosyncrasies, iconic music videos and moments of joy with Robyn. The movie revels in black joy more than black suffering, even though Whitney could be the poster child for both. Screenwriter Anthony McCarten and Lemmons fail in constructing a legible film, but they at least make a fun one.

Playing Whitney Houston is a daunting task that Naomi Ackie is more or less up for. She looks the part and most of the singing sequences use Whitney’s voice. Therein lies the issue, she evokes Whitney more than she embodies her. Watching the movie, you can see that Ackie understands what made Whitney special. Yet, she doesn’t bring herself to the role or delve deeper into Whitney’s perspective, an issue that's already in the script. In the end, the performance comes off as a strong impersonation. That’s still more than can be said of any of the supporting cast, who aren’t given enough material to transcend their two-dimensional purposes in the story.

Music is the centerpiece of the movie, with some performances (like the 1994 American Music Awards medley) given the opportunity to play in full.Still, if you are still with your family on extended holiday and need something to take your Mother or Grandmother to, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody is waiting for you with open arms. It’s a rocking good time with two and a half hours packed with Whitney music, Lifetime level overacting and just buckets of charisma. It’s not right, but it’s OK. B-

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody is currently playing in theaters now.

Comments

[sandwichspy]

"She looks the part."

I don't think I'm blind, but this is definitely not true. The disparity is actually distracting.

[Mr Ripley79]

I was looking forward to this as a huge Whitney fan but sort of knew what i'd get and this review confrims it.

A quick run through of her Wikipedia page,it looks like it's filled from someone's Whitney Top 10 moments on YouTube.

Ackie doesn't look like Whitney but that's not a major concern.

I prefer a biopic to be like Jackie or even Stan and Ollie focusing on a small pivotal aspect of a stars life.

[McGill]

Granted, I’m not that familiar with Whitney Houston’s life or music, so I’m not speaking from a depth of experience or expectation.

But I always like Kasi Lemmons as a director. She infuses her work with a warmth and humanity and makes her actors feel secure. I liked the actors in this movie. I thought they felt at ease and confident in their characters.

I loved Cissie Houston, Whitney’s mother (Tamara Tunie), from the moment she instructed the young Whitney “Enunciate (yes!!), remember to tell the story that’s in the song, know the melody deeply before you add flourishes”.

Nafessa Williams as Robyn was buoyant and appealing, Clarke Peters (always getting to the heart of things) was almost scary in his grasping self-absorption. Stanley Tucci as Clive Davis was helpful, kind, and smart. And British actress Naomi Ackie was open hearted and empathetic as Whitney, letting her character in with gentle care.

There is even a cameo by writer/ director Elegance Bratton (“The Inspection”) as a bar tender, telling Whitney how much her music meant to him, emphasizing how Whitney’s music touched a whole community of artists. I liked that there wasn’t much Bobbie Brown, because I’m not interested in him, and the movie makes it clear that Robyn was the love of her life.

That the movie chose “This is why we love Whitney Houston” rather than “Let me explain Whitney Houston to you” ...well, okay, I’m fine with that.

[DK]

So it's a middle-of-the-road tribute movie.

This is what drives me nuts about the media: If this had been a gritty, fair, warts-and-all exploration of Whitney Houston "the woman" you'd have writers complaining from the rooftops that "This was done without the blessing of Whitney's family/estate/loved ones!!!!" And is therefore inappropriate, illegitimate, shouldn't have been made, etc. An insult to Whitney's memory, yada yada yada. "Problematic, exploitative." So dumb.

Allowing Clive Davis and Whitney's heirs to produce a biopic leads to exactly the kind of glossy, unilluminating mediocrity you're describing here. But public figures (in some sense) belong to the public, they are ours to inquire about, interpret, investigate and contextualize. Filmmakers and artists don't need anyone's permission to do that.

Biopics don't have to be tributes, they aren't required to leave out the things business partners and surviving relatives would prefer to delete. A movie like Blonde got a lot of flak but I'd take that any day over a dumb money grab.