Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody

“I Wanna Dance with Somebody” is the kind of lavishly impassioned all-stops-out biopic you either give into or you don’t — and if you do, you may find yourself getting so emotional, baby.

The movie isn’t a melodramatic tell-all, or a total downer. But it manages, even while being unapologetically entertaining, to feel like an honest reckoning with all the things we didn’t want to know about Houston at her fame’s height. It’s a film that takes our failings into consideration, rather than simply fixating on hers, a summation of all the things she tried to tell us and couldn’t.

How deep can an authorised portrait of Whitney Houston delve? The answer: not very. I Wanna Dance with Somebody aims, instead, to climb high – to cheer and celebrate as a glitzy biopic, where documentaries have tended to dwell morbidly on Houston’s downfall.

Houston’s magic as a performer was in her unpredictability; her voluminous range, the trailing vocal journey her famous runs took us on from note to note, measure to measure. When she (and Ackie) come alive on stage, Lemmons’ biopic soars with vibrating energy. It’s all the moments in between that grow ever more frustrating — the thin characterization, the flattening of her story into Behind the Music story beats, rushing from milestone to milestone without taking a breath.

This biopic reaches its high point early on, as Bafta-winner Naomi Ackie vividly portrays the pop star during her meteoric ascent. But once the film reaches Houston’s later career, when drugs and a difficult marriage began to take their toll, the story doesn’t just become more downbeat but also more of a slog, falling to find an insightful angle into this slow-motion tragedy.

While the content of the film is flat, Ackie truly shines as Whitney throughout the various stages of her career, and manages to bring the star’s energy and charisma to life.

This is just another run-of-the-mill, dramatically limp music biopic meant to be pure brand management. There are so many scenes of Naomi Ackie lip-synching full performances of these songs, and all you can say is, "Yeah, Whitney Houston was such a great singer." I don't need this movie to know that. I can just stay home and listen to her, which is an infinitely more rewarding experience.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

What’s up, Streamers! It’s a slow weekend in January. There aren’t a lot of highly anticipated movies being released this month. I decided to catch a December released that I missed during the holiday season. I caught up with the Whitney Houston movie titled: Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody. I’m only expecting biopic tropes and a lot of Whitney songs. Here’s how it goes. I assume no synopsis of the Whitney Houston biopic is necessary. It’s a movie about Whitney Houston’s life – from her initial record deal to her untimely death. This isn’t the first movie that has told some part of this story, so there aren’t any surprises. Crack is whack and hijinks ensue. There really isn’t much to this movie. The biggest reason to see Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody is to hear all of the great songs and see a dynamic performance by Naomi Ackie. It’s not a special movie otherwise because it is a paint-by-numbers, run-of-the-mill biographical film about a music icon who has a drug problem and died too soon. Naomi Ackie gives a good performance. She is lip syncing to Whitney’s vocals most of the time, but she emotes through the songs pretty well. The recreation of the music videos is fun to see, and each needle drop reminds you of the power that Houston had in pop music. I will say that while the movie is too long it moves at a good pace. It isn’t boring, especially if you like the next song that plays, and it ends of a high note. Ultimately, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody is another in a long line of music biopics. It doesn’t do anything new with the genre or tell you anything that you probably didn’t already know about Whitney Houston. It does have great music that will have you singing along and dancing in the aisles. That may be enough for the Whitney Houston fans to grab a big box of popcorn. Everyone else can wait for this to stream at home.

It’s incredibly generic, as all these wiki-biopics are, but credit goes to the film for not shying away from Whitney’s personal life (unlike “BoRap”) and drug addiction (unlike “Respect”). Fans of her will get their kicks if they don’t go in expecting anything awards-worthy.

bad [ bad ] adjective, worse, worst;(Slang) bad·der, bad·dest for 36. not good in any manner or degree.

I watched another Bio of Whitney that was released a few years ago (2019). It told the story of how Whitney got her start and her friendship with Robyn. I didn't like this new version because I didn't think the actress was that good.