Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody
Year: 2022
Director: Kasi Lemmons
Starring: Naomi Ackie, Ashton Sanders & Stanley Tucci
Runtime: 146 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 29/04/24
Director: Kasi Lemmons
Starring: Naomi Ackie, Ashton Sanders & Stanley Tucci
Runtime: 146 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 29/04/24
I won’t claim to be any kind of expert on Whitney Houston and her music, but I do know that she was a one-of-a-kind artist with an incredible vocal range. She had an ear for an excellent tune, and her story is a true tragedy.
I missed I Wanna Dance with Somebody when it released in cinemas around Christmas 2022 and it had been sitting on my NowTV watchlist since it premiered on there. I finally took the time to check it out and to say I’m sorely disappointed would be an understatement.
Whitney Houston (Naomi Ackie) is a nineteen-year-old catholic choir singer, coached by her mother, soul singer Cissy Houston (Tamara Tunie). When she lands a record deal with producer Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci), Whitney quickly climbs the record charts with her unique and powerful sound.
But her personal life is the subject of constant scrutiny, whether it be her closeted romance with best friend Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams), her tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders), or her drug addiction that led to her untimely death at the age of forty-eight.
Let’s start with the good. Ackie is excellent here, and it might be the best role I’ve ever seen her in. She has so much power and grace behind her performance, and she moves through the decades of Houston’s life with ease. She absolutely nails it, and her performance is by a considerable margin the films greatest achievement.
I missed I Wanna Dance with Somebody when it released in cinemas around Christmas 2022 and it had been sitting on my NowTV watchlist since it premiered on there. I finally took the time to check it out and to say I’m sorely disappointed would be an understatement.
Whitney Houston (Naomi Ackie) is a nineteen-year-old catholic choir singer, coached by her mother, soul singer Cissy Houston (Tamara Tunie). When she lands a record deal with producer Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci), Whitney quickly climbs the record charts with her unique and powerful sound.
But her personal life is the subject of constant scrutiny, whether it be her closeted romance with best friend Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams), her tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders), or her drug addiction that led to her untimely death at the age of forty-eight.
Let’s start with the good. Ackie is excellent here, and it might be the best role I’ve ever seen her in. She has so much power and grace behind her performance, and she moves through the decades of Houston’s life with ease. She absolutely nails it, and her performance is by a considerable margin the films greatest achievement.
Unfortunately, I can’t be as positive about the rest of the film. It falls at many of the same hurdles as most music biopics, cutting corners to fit in as many hit tunes as it can. But I Wanna Dance with Somebody manages to somehow have an extremely bloated runtime of close to two and a half hours, and yet also move with such breakneck pace that it almost gave me whiplash.
It’s constantly jumping around in time, and more than once gets the year wrong for the event it’s depicting (her wedding being the most egregious example of this), and with all this time jumping it rarely give any indication as to what year it is. Sometimes we’re treated to a date and location appearing as text, but it’s used rarely leaving you to try and fill in the gaps and slot the disjointed scenes into some semblance of a timeline.
It also glosses over the majority of the hardship that Houston endured. Her drug abuse is only brought up fleetingly once or twice before the final scene at the Hilton where Houston died following an accidental drowning due to an overdose.
Her marriage to Brown is depicted as rocky but far from the emotionally abusive prison it is said to have been. Plus, we are often told about how her race negatively affects public perception of her, but we’re never actually shown it.
I think it might have also been a nice inclusion to increase the presence of her daughter, Bobbi (Bria Danielle Singleton), explore how she coped with her parents troubled marriage, her mother’s addiction, and perhaps end the film with her untimely death that was eerily similar to her mothers.
Whilst Ackie’s performance is truly spectacular, I Wanna Dance with Somebody is a below average by the numbers music biopic. The fact that director Kasi Lemmons can’t even get the year right for some well documented moments in Houston’s life shows how woefully under researched this film was, and it’s just too afraid to paint the star in any kind of negative light for fear of tarnishing her legacy. It’s too squeaky clean, and a film about a remarkable woman with a difficult life and an addiction that killed her just can’t be this family friendly. Whitney deserves better than this.
It’s constantly jumping around in time, and more than once gets the year wrong for the event it’s depicting (her wedding being the most egregious example of this), and with all this time jumping it rarely give any indication as to what year it is. Sometimes we’re treated to a date and location appearing as text, but it’s used rarely leaving you to try and fill in the gaps and slot the disjointed scenes into some semblance of a timeline.
It also glosses over the majority of the hardship that Houston endured. Her drug abuse is only brought up fleetingly once or twice before the final scene at the Hilton where Houston died following an accidental drowning due to an overdose.
Her marriage to Brown is depicted as rocky but far from the emotionally abusive prison it is said to have been. Plus, we are often told about how her race negatively affects public perception of her, but we’re never actually shown it.
I think it might have also been a nice inclusion to increase the presence of her daughter, Bobbi (Bria Danielle Singleton), explore how she coped with her parents troubled marriage, her mother’s addiction, and perhaps end the film with her untimely death that was eerily similar to her mothers.
Whilst Ackie’s performance is truly spectacular, I Wanna Dance with Somebody is a below average by the numbers music biopic. The fact that director Kasi Lemmons can’t even get the year right for some well documented moments in Houston’s life shows how woefully under researched this film was, and it’s just too afraid to paint the star in any kind of negative light for fear of tarnishing her legacy. It’s too squeaky clean, and a film about a remarkable woman with a difficult life and an addiction that killed her just can’t be this family friendly. Whitney deserves better than this.