Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody (2022)
Whitney Houston, also known as The Voice, has quite a bit in common with Elvis and Judy Garland in that she’s a little hard to pin down. It’s like treading on sacred space. Any singer who watches her perform can only hope to come anywhere close to what Houston had.
Ergo, it’s completely understandable to approach I Wanna Dance With Somebody with a bit of trepidation, especially when its screenplay was written by one of the folks who brought us the uneven Bohemian Rhapsody. And when Sony circulates a pretty rough-looking clip that I could only hope was an outtake (It is).
Dance is a fairly simple movie. Act One starts out strong. Act Two maintains Act One’s strength but then loses momentum. Act Three is a slow train to Hades. There’s not much to spoil because Houston’s life is pretty well-known, but how her life is presented is obviously the big draw, so anyone who hasn’t seen the film yet may want to proceed with caution.
The movie does a lot of things right and is particularly strong in terms of casting. Naomi Ackie, who was initially uncomfortable taking on the role of Houston, gives a wonderful performance and even does her own singing in a few spots. The always-superb Stanley Tucci is terrific as Houston’s producer Clive Davis, Nafessa Williams puts in a competent but underutilized turn as Houston’s assistant and best friend-with-short-lived-benefits Robyn Crawford, and Tamara Tunie and Clarke Davis shine as Houston’s parents.
The film also looks gorgeous and really puts the viewer in the world of the nineteen-eighties and nineties. It’s fun watching Houston and Robyn dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller and seeing Houston wear the fluffy hairstyles and puffy, shiny outfits that were so popular back then for the fashionably daring, not to mention the acid wash denim everyone wore. There’s also a ton of music, which will satisfy the fans.
I also liked that Houston rather passionately addresses criticism that she wasn’t “black” enough, a beef which I’ve always found narrow-minded, because people responded to Houston being herself and singing the way she liked. Color wasn’t her motivator when it came to music; as so many musicians and performers know, music isn’t a racial thing but a big melting pot, which is part of what makes it so cool.
For all its good points, however, I Wanna Dance With Somebody is an all-too-usual biopic, skimming over the high points of Houston’s life and never really allowing connection with her or much of a story. One minute we’re seeing the relationship between Houston and her parents, or the relationship between she and Robyn, or the relationship between she and husband Bobby Brown.
I wish the movie had picked a relationship to focus on, because it hearkens back to the title—Houston was looking to connect with someone who loved her. Each one of the relationships we see in the movie could have been its own compelling story, but it doesn’t give us that. We might as well be watching MTV or reading People Magazine.
What really drags it all down is the music, which usually serves as filler, especially as the movie winds up. It shouldn’t, because this is, after all, a movie about The Voice, but there has to be a balance between story and music, the latter of which is way better than the script. It would have helped if we could have seen some of the way Houston worked, but nope, it doesn’t happen. We’re supposed to believe Houston’s songs just existed and no work was put in.
The last minutes are where everything falls flat, as the scene in which Houston prepares to take her fateful final bath at the Beverly Hilton fades to her 1994 AMA spot. We watch someone who’s not Houston recreate one of Houston’s most iconic performances, and while Ackie gives it her all, the sequence goes on and on and on and on (The AMA performance is ten minutes long, by the way). It’s nice that everyone who loves Houston is in the scene watching her perform and smiling. It’s a coda to Houston’s story. It should be very touching. The problem is that what’s left of the movie’s narrative comes to a screeching halt. I couldn’t wait for it to be over.
The other thing that made it hard to connect with Ackie’s portrayal, good as it was, was the way she kept looking heavenward during the musical sequences. Like, constantly. To be fair, Ackie was probably trying to bring her own Houston into the mix, but real Houston always sang directly to her audiences as if having a conversation. Ackie looked as if she was begging for help from the real Houston or maybe asking, “How am I doing?”
I can’t blame Ackie if this was the case; portraying Whitney Houston is a daunting task, and while I Wanna Dance With Somebody was made with obvious love, it’s too bad that it’s way more typical than The Voice ever was.
Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody is currently in theaters. Rated PG-13.
My grade: C
Principal cast: Naomi Ackie, Stanley Tucci, Ashton Sanders, Tamara Tunie, Clarke Peters, Nafessa Williams
Directed by: Kasi Lemmons
Written by: Anthony McCarten