'Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody' Review: From Wiki to Whitney
Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody
PG-13: Strong drug content, some strong language, smoking, suggestive references
Runtime: 2 Hours and 26 Minutes
Production Companies: Compelling Pictures, Black Label Media, Primary Wave Entertainment, Muse of Fire Productions, West Madison Entertainment, TSG Entertainment II
Distributor: Tristar Pictures
Director: Kasi Lemmons
Writer: Anthony McCarten
Cast: Naomi Ackie, Stanley Tucci, Ashton Sanders, Tamara Tunie, Nafessa Williams, Clarke Peters
Release Date: December 23, 2022
In Theaters Only
This triumphant celebration of the incomparable Whitney Houston is the untold story of the complex and multifaceted woman behind The Voice. From New Jersey choir girl to one of the best-selling and most awarded recording artists of all time, follow the inspirational, poignant—and so emotional—journey through Houston's trailblazing life and career, with show-stopping performances and a soundtrack of the icon's most beloved hits as you've never heard them before.
The death of Whitney Houston in 2012 felt like a fever dream. She had just filmed the underrated Sparkle remake and was going to perform at Clive Davis’ pre-Grammy party that evening. Only time would tell how many Whitney projects would sprout after her tragic, untimely passing. There was the Nick Broomfield and Rudi Dolezal Showtime doc Whitney: Can I Be Me, the Kevin Macdonald doc Whitney, and of course, the Angela Bassett-helmed Lifetime TV movie (also named Whitney). There was bound to be a big studio biopic just around the corner.
Whitney Houston’s energy and charismatic personality will never be replicated. Naomi Ackie might not look the part of Houston in the slightest—hell, Ackie herself is aware of that—but she captures the essence of Whitney’s personality. She exudes all of Houston’s characteristics and is overflowing with confidence. She doesn’t fall into an over-the-top territory, even when the film mandates her to. Throughout it all, Ackie finds balance in displaying Houston’s humanity as accurately as possible.
The supporting cast embodies the likeness of the people they portray. I can’t believe I’m saying this about a Whitney Houston movie, but my favorite performance comes from Ashton Sanders as Bobby Brown. I couldn’t help but giggle over how hard he committed to this role. Brown and Whitney’s relationship is frustratingly glossed over, but the screentime that Sanders and Ackie share while reenacting their complicated relationship is special. The same goes for Houston’s relationship with her assistant and ex-GF, Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams). Ackie and Williams have spectacular chemistry, and their camaraderie has some heft. The ensemble tries to give Houston’s story some love through their performances. Sadly, when your screenwriter is known to crank out the fast-food version of musical biopics, it cancels out all good intentions from the rest of the cast and crew.
I’m gonna keep it real with y’all: I dreaded seeing this movie all year. When I learned that Bohemian Rhapsody (or Rhapshitty) screenwriter Anthony McCarten was going to self-finance and pen the script for a Whitney Houston biopic, I tried to avoid it like the plague. The fact that the marketing prioritized crediting McCarten’s script over Kasi Lemmons’ (Harriet) direction felt like a warning. But alas, we all have to face our fears eventually.
It’s important to note that Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody is the first biopic authorized by Whitney’s estate. Therefore, this project had to be squeaky clean to be approved by the people who run her estate, a.k.a. her former producer Clive Davis and other influential music entities. At first glance, this project might seem like less of a movie and more of a calculated commercial that says, “We’re celebrating Whitney,” to garner a new generation of fans who only know her from the cover of Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” that Kygo remixed. However… wait, no. That’s precisely what this “biopic” is. It’s a shallow, daft, poorly-paced, lazily constructed cash grab that uses Whitney Houston’s Wikipedia page as a blueprint for the most lifeless cinematic experience of 2022.
Director Kasi Lemmons takes a respectable approach to Whitney’s story. She prioritizes an immersive BTS feel where you navigate the industry alongside Whitney. Lemmons pulls fantastic performances from her cast, but Anthony McCarten’s screenplay dampens every sliver of potential the film has.
This story—like most bad biopics—lacks focus. The narrative breezes through Houston’s career, highlighting her biggest songs, her music videos, the shows she performed, and the movies she starred in. With its 146-minute runtime, the film never takes a moment to explore what made Whitney human. McCarten is transparent with his concern for appeasing the estate by playing it safe with the depiction of her drug addiction. He goes through a “greatest hits” structure that prevents the viewer from feeling like they’re watching a substantial movie about the music icon. The marketing for this film claimed, “The side of Whitney you never knew,” but the story is so career-focused that you never actually get to know her.
The most jarring aspect of the film’s pacing is that it spans several decades, and the characters’ appearance fails to highlight the passage of time.
Whenever the film tries to explore Houston’s relationship with Crawford, Brown, Davis, her controlling father, John Houston, and her mother, Cissy, the dialogue is so one-note that it dilutes the good performances. Everybody comes across as character actors from an Investigation Discovery music doc. No two characters share a genuine conversation, for everybody speaks in the most operatic lines straight out of a first draft. It’s maddening how many of her relationships are ripe for character development, but McCarten is foreign to the idea of the words “nuanced” and “complex.” Every line is on the nose and hits every beat of the most generic music biopic that almost feels deliberately satirical.
The only time there is some semblance of substance comes from scenes shared between Houston and (surprise, surprise) Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci). Tucci and Ackie are great together, but given how closely Davis was attached to this project, it comes across as artificial. The film adds more nuance to Davis’ queer identity than it did to Houston, and the information about Houston’s queerness is still fresh.
Opposite this year’s Elvis, where Baz Luhrmann’s signature flair and unique take on storytelling revitalized the music biopic sub-genre, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody is symbolic of everything I hate about them. For the love of God, Hollywood, stop letting Anthony McCarton tackle these queer biopics. He’s not fucking equipped to write these scripts. Letting a mediocre cis white male screenwriter pen a movie about a Black pop icon after he vilified Freddie Mercury’s queerness is the dumbest decision Whitney’s estate has made. If a Black woman is directing, why didn’t you get a Black woman to pen the script too? This film needed someone who understands Whitney’s intricacies to write a focused character study of a human battling addiction. Instead, we got another “super talented woman whose career was incredible, but she also happened to have had an addiction” biopic. I’m tired of wasting words on a mediocre film marketed as being “From the writer of Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Despite Naomi Ackie and her castmates pouring their soul into giving Whitney the love she deserves, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody is a hollow Wiki-biopic bereft of any character. It’s a lifeless representation of one of the most charismatic songstresses of her generation. It’s so transparent in its commercialization that Kygo’s “Higher Love” remix as the end credits song was like a perfect final bow.
