Worth: $12.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Naomi Ackie, Stanley Tucci, Ashton Sanders, Tamara Tunie, Nafessa Williams
Intro:
… on the strength of the lead performance and the ever-soaring soundtrack, there might be just enough here to overcome its plentiful shortcomings.
During the twilight years of her life, and well after its tragic end, Whitney Houston as a pop star was stuck between the clean-cut image of her public persona, and the scandalous excesses of her private life. This biopic, penned by Bohemian Rhapsody’s Anthony McCarten and directed by Harriet’s Kasi Lemmons, tries to reconcile those two halves into a complete picture of Whitney Houston the person. However, the ways the filmmakers go about it range from the strange to the unintentionally self-sabotaging.
Along with falling into the common biopic trap of trying to cover every aspect of its subject’s life in the space of a single movie, the way all the major events are treated feels deliberately airbrushed. Her relationships with family, friends, and Bobby Brown, struggles and successes within the music industry, substance abuse; there’s enough foundation for a properly cathartic and tragic story, but the film is unable to hit the high notes. Drug use is politely cut away from, actions that should get the blood boiling get stuck between being under and overplayed, and in the case of Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders), the film bends itself into a pretzel trying to alleviate his role in their relationship. One of many decisions that end up making Whitney look worse for its inclusion.
There’s also the queer dimension of the narrative to consider, incorporating aspects from Robyn Crawford’s A Song For You: My Life With Whitney Houston to flesh out her romantic history. This ends up being the biggest victim of the airbrushing, as we end up getting more dialogue devoted to Whitney quoting literal gospel about how their relationship is wrong than anything about how it affected her as a person. Sexuality ends up playing a bigger role for her producer Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci), who not only gets to properly convey gay solidarity but ends up with the most nuanced character. Even without looking, Davis’ involvement in the film’s production is obvious.
What makes the scattershot and occasionally embarrassing writing hurt even worse is that, in spite of it, there is a shining jewel to this film: Naomi Ackie as Whitney herself. While still let down by the material, her stage presence during the performance scenes is absolutely phenomenal. Her lip-syncing is a non-issue, her every facial and body movement sells each note in the music, and even in the talky scenes, she gives the role a sturdy humanity that is often lacking in the words.
I Wanna Dance With Somebody sells itself as being ‘from the writer of Bohemian Rhapsody’, and that’s more of a warning than an advertisement. It suffers from a lot of the same problems in its placid treatment of the biopic formula, especially in its hesitance to actually reckon with the unpleasant parts of the story. But on the strength of the lead performance and the ever-soaring soundtrack, there might be just enough here to overcome its plentiful shortcomings.
