Directed By Kasi Lemmons

Starring – Naomi Ackie, Stanley Tucci, Nafessa Williams

The Plot – A joyous, emotional, heartbreaking celebration of the life and music of Whitney Houston (Ackie), one of the greatest female R&B pop vocalists of all time, tracking her journey from obscurity to musical superstardom.

Rated PG-13 for suggestive references, smoking, strong drug content, and some strong language

I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY – Official Trailer (HD) – YouTube

POSITIVES

Stepping into the shoes of the single greatest voice of our generation is no easy task, but Naomi Ackie gives a buzzworthy breakthrough performance that easily immerses her into the role, despite her looking nothing like her iconic pop counterpart. Aside from the burden of carrying this film on her shoulders, which would be a lot weaker without her dramatic flare and tangibility, Ackie seamlessly shoulders the weight of responsibility of depicting America’s sweetheart, channeling the warmth of ambition and the fiery intensity that made her the focus of any stage she chose to step foot on, with her razor-sharp diatribe commanding the attention of her limitless fandom. Ackie unfortunately doesn’t sing a majority of Whitney’s time-honored tracks, which make it difficult to visually assess this as Whitney who we’re watching, but her conviction and cadence to dialogue submits an homage rather than an impression, cementing her as the right woman for the tremendously titanic enveloping. In addition to Ackie, Stanley Tucci bares a startling similarity to Clive Davis, both in visual and vocal capacities, with some subtly effective uses of wig and make-up work affording him the freedom of transformation for the cause. Emotionally, Tucci provides a warmth to Davis that nourishes his scenes next to Ackie with an element of heart and even parental guidance, serving as the best instances of insight for the movie, all the while once more proving Tucci’s immensity in worth as perhaps the greatest utility actor of our generation. Aside from the performances, the direction from Lemmons capably avoids a television movie-of-the-week feel, with bold production values that spark the spectacle of Houston’s whirlwind career. Easily most impressive with her helming is the recreation of popular music videos and iconic stage performances that vividly bring to life the most particular details and iconic moments in the singer’s career, with Lemmons familiar introspective approach to the photography that decorate her features. It’s clear that Kaci has a lot of love and admiration for Houston, painting all of the respective highs and lows of her prestigious career that help convey the bigger picture, instead of relegating it to just another puff piece that irresponsibly paints her as something she wasn’t, but Lemmons luster of the lens gives it that distinct big screen appeal that easily makes it the biggest of the four Whitney features that have invaded cinema in the last three years alone, bringing along a boat load of familiar favorites in song choices that help cement what is easily one of my favorite soundtracks of the season.

NEGATIVES

“I Wanna Dance with Somebody” is everything I feared it would be. It’s another in the stacking pile of shallow, by-the-numbers music biopics, in that it delivers a Wikipedia page of bullet point storytelling meant to include as many of the significant moments in a musician’s career, without cutting into the meat of their meaning. For this installment, it pertains to everything from the absence of Whitney as a mother, to disappearing characters throughout, to her emerging drug addiction that literally comes out of nowhere, to even the creative process of music, which once again is lazily rendered in the same topical manner that it was in “Bohemian Rhapsody”, where songs emerge by accident instead of inspiration. However, one aspect that it does better than that film is that it at least gets the dates right, but they fly by so ruthlessly that you sometimes forget where exactly you’re at in the timely narrative and can only clear it up by experiencing the event that it’s depicting. This leads to another major problem with the film: Its pacing, which somehow takes a 141-minute movie, and makes it feel like it’s constantly being rushed by jamming in as many subplots as possible to the narrative. This does allow the film to persist consistently, with pacing that constantly keeps moving forward, but it alienates the opportunity to stop inside of one specific moment to bring knowledge or evolution to Whitney’s character. So, you often receive a buffet list of events that appear spontaneously and sporadically, creating a dejected sense of freneticism to the engagement, and one that grows tediously uninvesting the longer the film persists. Besides the perils associated with the script, the padding of the run time is consequentially unjustified, with the usage of its entertaining but convoluted soundtrack garnering an almost consistent annoyance. Because the film involves entire performances each time a track is introduced, it takes more away from the element of the aforementioned storytelling, in that it leaves so little room for opportunity in contrast to the expanding soundtrack, in turn further embellishing that Houston is only one thing to many people inside of this shallow surface level universe. This is further echoed by the lack of backstory to Whitney, which completely overrides the first act of her life, pre-music, that keeps us from ever knowing the woman behind the music. This leaves the justification of the project to an air of unfulfilled ambiguity because we never truly learn anything new about Whitney or the behind-the-scenes charade that ultimately sacrificed her to her career. In fact, I learned more about Clive Davis than I did Whitney, an aspect that could stand as a result of him serving as a producer on the film, but one that points to the bigger problem, in that it’s a film that is made entirely for the inexperienced, and never the hardcore enthusiasts like myself who will inevitably make up a majority of its box office.

OVERALL
Houston, we have a problem. Whitney Houston’s turn with the biopic treatment brings another coldly underwritten and consequentially underwhelming experience to such a musical and cultural trailblazer. It’s a nearly two-and-a-half-hour musical catalog on random, with storytelling, insight and characterization subjected to supporting vocals, leaving the talents of Ackie and Tucci free from a curtain call that the film never even remotely earns.

My Grade: 5/10 or D