Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody Review: The Plague Of The Formulaic Music Biopic Charges On

Let me know if you've heard this one before. A young, aspiring musician gets discovered by a record executive. They shoot to the top of the charts and become a superstar, performing for larger and larger crowds and find themselves moving on from their humble beginnings into an extravagant, lavish lifestyle. Then, they find themselves in the midst of fame, where the spotlight is constantly on them and every person in their life wants something from them, especially money. Meanwhile, a love affair starts that will inevitably go south in due time. They become addicted to drugs and hit rock bottom, eventually having to go to rehab. A few years later, they make a triumphant return to their true calling of music.

I have just described to you basically every single biopic about a famous musician. Some cover it up with flashy stylistic choices, like "Elvis." Some disguise it with non-linear storytelling, like "Get On Up." And some make it a musical using the artist's songs to tell the story, like "Rocketman." Ultimately, none of them can fully escape the dreaded formula we have been sitting through year after year as yet another beloved artist gets their life story rendered on screen. We are subjected to a constant string of Wikipedia biographies posing as feature films in order to cement the person's standing as a legend (and please stream the music on your streaming service of choice when you leave the theater!). The least we can hope for is that the filmmakers behind one of these pictures will bring a little something to it. I wasn't the biggest fan of "Elvis," but at least Baz Luhrmann knows how to deliver some visual panache to spice things up.

The latest entry into the genre is "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody," and I feel as though I have experienced the nadir of a genre that already barely has a leg to stand on. This portrait of the world-class singer nicknamed "The Voice" may be a whopping 146 minutes long, but in that time, it offers almost nothing in the way of insight into Whitney Houston's passions, her creative process, or what troubled her throughout her life that was tragically cut short. All this film is seemingly interested in is that she was really good at singing and that drugs are bad, neither of which are enough to fully examine a person's life. In the end, "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody" tells us basically nothing.

Even in the worst music biopics, there is always some sort of dramatic juice in the moments where we get to see the musician hone their craft. Whether they are in a recording studio, on stage, or just sitting around with collaborators and an instrument, seeing a musician find the song that will go on to become a signature sound of so many people's lives and memories is thrilling. In recent years, this is best showcased in the Brian Wilson biopic "Love & Mercy," where we see Paul Dano painstakingly crafting what would become the album "Pet Sounds."

Whitney Houston wasn't a songwriter. She was a singer and performer. So, while we may not have scenes of her creating a song from scratch, we should surely have scenes of Naomi Ackie as Houston molding previously written material to her exquisite voice, right? Wrong. Without fail, every scene of discovering what would be Houston's next #1 single follows the exact same path. She and record executive Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci) will be sitting in his office listening to a string of cassette tapes until one strikes their fancy. Cut to: Whitney Houston perfectly performing the song we all know. By cutting out all of the work that goes into crafting a #1 single, it strips Houston of her humanity. If she just immediately delivers the perfect recording or performance, talent is all she is. We are meant to think she deserves her success because she won the vocal lottery and not because of the human effort and toll it takes to create. A god becoming successful has no dramatic stakes because it is predestined. A human becoming successful, however, can be a triumph.

The desire to make her otherworldly hinders the other side of the story as well. Houston's life featured quite a bit of tragedy, namely a truly sad drug addiction that eventually contributed to her death at just 48 years old. The film is ultimately too afraid to confront us with the true ugliness that addiction can cause. Even though drugs became so important in the second half of her life, we barely see her use them on screen, and the effects of them are minimally rendered. Director Kasi Lemmons will very occasionally speed up some cuts or have the sound drop out of a performance to signify her mental state, but those moments are few and far between. Because Houston is no longer with us, there is always a desire to honor a person's legacy, but there is a difference between honoring and lionizing.

Even with all that, Whitney Houston is not nearly as much of a saint as Clive Davis is portrayed here. He is constantly at her side and never takes advantage of his position of power in any way. He very well could be like this, but also, Davis just so happens to be one of the producers of the film, which basically tells you all you need to know about how deep they are willing to dig into him.

Well, if narratively the film is going to gloss over the harder edges of Whitney Houston's, I guess the look of the film should match it? Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd has made a career for decades working with likes of Ken Loach, Paul Greengrass, and Kathryn Bigelow, shooting realistic, documentary-esque features that are about as rough and gritty as films can be. Why Kasi Lemmons chose him to shoot "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody" I will never understand. Ackroyd couldn't be further outside his comfort zone behind the camera, and the results are, frankly, disastrous.

The film is so over-lit and has such a plasticky sheen to it that it makes the picture look incredibly cheap. No environment has texture. Close-ups are neither glamorous nor revealing of character. Concert scenes that are meant to take place in theaters and stadiums look like they were shot on the set of a TV show like "Access Hollywood." When your film is missing an engaging thrust of story and character, you would hope that you maybe could fall back onto the visuals to find some beauty in the piece. Unfortunately, there's very little to be found here.

Whitney Houston deserves better than this. She was someone who felt like she was bearing her soul every single time she opened her mouth to sing. In the film, her mother (Tamara Tunie) imparts the mantra that singing comes from your head, your heart, and your gut, but nothing about "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody" reflects that in the slightest. 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.

/Film rating: 2 out of 10