After we already know its terrible ending, why will we wish to watch a film like I Wanna Dance with Someone? (Which, technically, has had a last-minute retitling to Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Someone.) We’re all too conscious of what’s going to befall Houston in a lodge room in 2012, so every little thing previous it looks like a march towards damage. That weight drags down director Kasi Lemmons’s movie; inevitably, maybe.
Issues begin properly, as they so usually do in path-to-stardom tales. We meet a younger Houston, a gifted church singer whose household is already ensconced within the music business. Houston is haloed in an aura of teeming potential; she’s shiny and hungry and, in these early days, determinedly herself. Houston, performed with equal elements flounce and flint by British actor Naomi Ackie, isn’t the pious daughter her dad and mom, and later a lot of America, need her to be. She strikes up a relationship with Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams), seemingly safe in her sexuality and never terribly guarded about it.
Right here Anthony McCarten’s script guarantees to be one thing completely different than the same old approved-by-the-estate biopic. There will probably be some transgression of the lore, a extra private and probing look into an icon’s life, not like so many movies that merely wander by means of the best hits. That power is maintained as Houston is found by Clive Davis (performed with avuncular purr by Stanley Tucci) and her profession begins its skyrocket ascent. Houston is assertive and self-possessed, intelligent about what songs enchantment to her and defiant about Robyn’s shut presence in her life. There’s a actual character examine taking place right here, one which Ackie approaches with intriguing nuance.
I Wanna Dance with Someone advantages, in fact, from Houston’s seismic songs, joyful pop blares and full-throated ballads that simply energize any scene during which they’re featured. We’re principally listening to Houston herself sing, however Ackie lip-syncs expressively. (A lot in order that I used to be positive it was her singing for a lot of the movie; post-screening studying suggests in any other case although.) Not everybody was enamored of Houston’s music again then; there was criticism throughout the Black neighborhood that Houston was too nakedly being marketed to white audiences, stripping her songs of any detectable notes of gospel or R&B, a sonic whitewashing. Right here is one other difficult aspect of Houston’s legacy, offered with a refreshing frankness.
However the movie introduces that challenge solely to shortly drop it. Because it does with Houston’s sexuality. I Wanna Dance with Someone finally devolves right into a boilerplate biopic, a collection of more and more unlucky occasions offered with little narrative form or texture. The movie whizzes by means of the years, skating blithely over The Bodyguard, by no means as soon as mentioning Ready to Exhale, and barely addressing Houston’s drug use till it’s turn into the issue that can destroy her.
I suppose the offhanded means that Lemmons incorporates Houston’s cocaine dependency into the story is likely to be the purpose; this was an insidious factor that went from informal to critical largely in secret. Nonetheless, the movie lacks some type of origin story for this side of Houston’s life: when exactly did it start, and the way? That is probably not what I Wanna Dance with Someone needs to give attention to, however in that well mannered avoidance, the movie thins itself into flimsiness. The looking out high quality of the movie’s beginnings loses out to the later bland reenactments.
Equally, the movie presents solely the rudimentary fundamentals of Houston’s risky marriage to Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders). By the point he enters the image, issues are transferring at too fast a clip for his presence to realize any traction. He’s there solely as a result of one can’t make a Whitney Houston biopic with out him. The movie loses sight of Robyn, too. Perhaps that’s reflective of Houston’s mounting isolation, however the movie has beforehand established an attention-grabbing and maybe defining relationship that it then casts apart for expediency’s sake. There’s additionally the matter of Houston’s dad and mom, performed forcefully by Tamara Tunie and Clarke Peters, who loom giant after they’re given a little bit of display screen time, however are finally jettisoned together with every little thing else.
A minimum of there’s the music to return to, repeatedly. There’s the well-known Tremendous Bowl nationwide anthem efficiency, the hovering belt of “I Will At all times Love You,” the righteous groove of “It’s Not Proper however It’s Okay.” I Wanna Dance with Someone is a mighty testomony to Houston’s catalog, the cathedral highs and sultry lows of her singular voice. These songs, not less than, are everlasting. If a film that merely presses play on the combo tape is what it takes to remind us of Houston’s particular energy, then that’s cause sufficient for the movie to exist. However the story behind the songs most likely deserves extra, and higher.
