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Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody

2022, Biography/Drama, 2h 26m

What to know

Critics Consensus

Another wiki-biopic for posterity's sake, the relatively watchable I Wanna Dance with Somebody leaves you feeling like you were on stage with Whitney Houston, but didn't really get to dance with her. Read critic reviews

Audience Says

Naomi Ackie does an outstanding job as Whitney Houston in I Wanna Dance with Somebody , and even longtime fans might learn a few things about the singer's life. Read audience reviews

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Whitney houston: i wanna dance with somebody videos, whitney houston: i wanna dance with somebody photos.

Discovered by record executive Clive Davis, Whitney Houston rises to fame in the 1980s to become one of the greatest singers of her generation.

Rating: PG-13 (Some Strong Language|Smoking|Strong Drug Content|Suggestive References)

Genre: Biography, Drama, Music

Original Language: English

Director: Kasi Lemmons

Producer: Anthony McCarten , Patricia Houston , Clive Davis , Larry Mestel , Denis O'Sullivan , Jeff Kalligheri , Matt Jackson , Molly Smith , Trent Luckinbill , Thad Luckinbill , Matthew Salloway , Christina Papagjika

Writer: Anthony McCarten

Release Date (Theaters): Dec 23, 2022 wide

Release Date (Streaming): Feb 28, 2023

Box Office (Gross USA): $23.4M

Runtime: 2h 26m

Distributor: TriStar Pictures

Production Co: West Madison Entertainment , Primary Wave Entertainment, Compelling Pictures, Muse of Fire, Black Label Media, TriStar Pictures

Sound Mix: Dolby Digital

Aspect Ratio: Scope (2.35:1)

Cast & Crew

Naomi Ackie

Whitney Houston

Stanley Tucci

Clive Davis

Nafessa Williams

Robyn Crawford

Tamara Tunie

Cissy Houston

Clarke Peters

John Houston

Ashton Sanders

Bobby Brown

Bria Danielle Singleton

Bobbi Kristina

Tanner Beard

Daniel Washington

Gary Houston

Alana Monteiro

Kasi Lemmons

Anthony McCarten

Screenwriter

Patricia Houston

Larry Mestel

Denis O'Sullivan

Jeff Kalligheri

Matt Jackson

Molly Smith

Trent Luckinbill

Thad Luckinbill

Matthew Salloway

Christina Papagjika

Executive Producer

Marina Cappi

Erika Hampson

Rachel Smith

Seth Spector

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‘Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ Review: Her Lonely Heart Calls

This film from Kasi Lemmons is a jukebox retelling of Whitney Houston’s parabola from sweatshirts to sequins.

In a scene from the film, a woman in a gold and black coat sings onstage.

By Amy Nicholson

No one could sing like Whitney Houston, and Kasi Lemmons, the director of the biopic “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” only rarely asks her lead, Naomi Ackie, to try. This is a jukebox retelling of Houston’s parabola from sweatshirts to sequins, from church choir girl to tabloid fixture, from her teenage romance with Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams), the woman who would continue on as her creative director, to her volatile marriage to Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders), who slithers into the movie licking his lips like he’s hungry to eat her alive.

Those beats are here. But it’s the melodies that matter, those moments when Ackie opens her mouth to channel Houston’s previously recorded songs. We’ve heard Houston’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You” countless times, and Lemmons bets, correctly, that the beloved hit will still seize us by the heart during the rather forthright montage she pairs with it, images of Houston marrying Brown, birthing her daughter Bobbi Kristina and honoring Nelson Mandela underneath a sky filled with fireworks.

Ackie doesn’t much resemble the superstar, although her carriage is correct: eyes closed, head flung back, arms pushing away the air as if to make room for that mezzo-soprano. That the film sticks to Houston’s surfaces is half excusable. The screenwriter Anthony McCarten seems to find that the woman underneath the pop star shell was still struggling to define herself at the time of her death at the age of 48. We see her raised to be the mini-me of her mother, the singer Cissy Houston (Tamara Tunie), complete with matching haircut, and then handed over to a recording label to be transformed into America’s Princess, a crown she wore with hesitance, and, later, resentment. (Stanley Tucci plays her friendly, Fagin-with-a-combover Clive Davis of Arista Records, who also produced this film.) At Houston’s final “Oprah” performance, recreated here, she belts an earnest ballad called, “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.”

Houston didn’t write her own material; she just sang like she did, courtesy of Cissy’s fastidious coaching. “God gives you a gift, you got to use it right,” Cissy lectures. Yet, Houston as seen here can only say yes or no to other people’s ideas of what she should sing, wear and do. (A camera pan suggests, unconvincingly, that Houston thought of the film’s title track as a love song to Crawford.) Increasingly, she chooses opposition. Her successes are shared — and her money swallowed up by her father (Clarke Peters), who was also her manager — but her mistakes are all hers. (Even though Lemmons takes care to include a scene in which Houston absolves Brown of her crack addiction.)

Houston’s defiance is the movie’s attempt to answer the great mystery of her career: why she deliberately damaged her voice through smoking and hard drugs. “It’s like leaving a Stradivarius in the rain!” Davis yelps. The trouble with a gift, the film decides, is it went undervalued by Houston herself, who assumes she’ll be able to hit bombastic high notes every night of her poorly reviewed final world tour. In this doomed stretch, the camera creeps so close to Ackie that you can count the beads of sweat on her nose. The smothering is heavy-handed, yet apropos for an artist who never had the space, or creative motivation, to fully express herself.

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody Rated PG-13 for drugs, cigarettes and swearing. Running time: 2 hours 26 minutes. In theaters.

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‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ Comes to Praise Whitney Houston, Not to Bury Her

By David Fear

You don’t have to be fanatical about Whitney Houston to have a go-to Whitney moment — you just need to love the sound of a human voice soaring into the stratosphere. Early adopters would probably cite her 1983 appearance on The Merv Griffin Show, right after Clive Davis signed her to Arista (she sang “Home” from the play The Wiz ). Others go straight to the “How Will I Know?” music video , which helped break her on MTV and thus, the pop charts. Hardcore Houston-heads know that if you want the real best-in-show performance, you check out the medley she performed at the 1994 American Music Awards of “I Loves You Porgy,” “And I Am Telling You,” and “I Have Nothing,” a true-blue vocalist triathlon. And don’t get us started on her definitive rendition of the National Anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl ….

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Instead, the movie works determinedly, almost single-mindedly to bring the focus back to her talent. That was what made Arista Records founder Clive Davis ( Stanley Tucci , part stunt casting and part inspired choice) sit up straight when he heard the young Houston sing at a tiny night club in New York City, and sign her almost immediately afterward. The talent was what inspired her mother, Cissy (Tamara Tunie), also a renowned and touring singer, to sacrifice the spotlight so her daughter could properly shine. (It’s Cissy who fakes a cough when Davis shows up at the Sweetwater’s gig, and Cissy who starts conducting the Merv Griffin Show ’s orchestra when the tempo gets sluggish during Whitney’s appearance. Per the film, at least.) The talent is how Houston went from simply making records to breaking records.

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Which is usually when the film bumps up against the curse that afflicts most music biopics: trying to depict a complicated life in a little over two hours. Screenwriter Anthony McCarten, who cowrote Bohemian Rhapsody , doesn’t try to push Houston’s romantic relationship with Crawford into the background or pretend it didn’t exist. There’s no gray area as to their love for each other, with Houston even telling Davis that the title song is about “when you wanna dance with somebody…but you just can’t. ” Message received. But even Crawford, hired as a “creative assistant,” is eventually relegated to just another person there to say “No” or “Be careful” or “You’ve changed” or “You need to change” before exiting stage left.

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<i>Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody</i> Captures Both the Tragedy and Glory of the Superstar

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody Captures Both the Tragedy and Glory of the Superstar

A s adored as she was in her lifetime, the real meaning of Whitney Houston didn’t click until she was gone. When she was alive, we knew about her extraordinary vocal range, and how electrifying a performer she was. We also knew she had substance-abuse problems, was struggling through a stormy marriage (to fellow pop star Bobby Brown), and, as the tabloids told us in trumpeting type, was gay or bisexual. For some reason, it was easy to be blasé about all of those things—weren’t the personal lives of all pop superstars a mess? Wasn’t that just the cost of being them? Weren’t they, on some level, just asking for trouble? Houston seemed to be playing off a rulebook that had been written long before she hit the scene. Her death in 201 2, after a drug-related drowning accident, was mournful but not particularly surprising.

Yet the more time passes, the sadder it seems that most of us didn’t pay closer attention to the person Houston really was, or was trying to be. The fractured framework of Houston’s life has been addressed in several documentaries (among them Kevin Macdonald’s Whitney and Nick Broomfield and Rudi Dolezal’s Whitney: Can I Be Me ) and several biopics or thinly veiled fictionalizations (including, most recently, Andrew Dosumnu’s earnest but inert Beauty ). But of the non-docs, at least, Kasi Lemmons ’ Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody— starring English actress Naomi Ackie—may come closest to capturing Houston’s exuberant contradictions, and the joy she both took and gave in performing. 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.

The story begins in 1983 New Jersey, with Ackie as the teenage Whitney, the star of her church gospel choir. Her vocals are disciplined—her discerning mama, Cissy (Tamara Tunie), a gospel singer extraordinaire herself, stands listening nearby, a stern criticism already taking shape in her eyes. Even so, Whitney’s voice is fresh and full of light, like a heartfelt promise. A little later, we see her listening to a song through headphones in a park. A girl comes up to say hello—it’s an innocent pickup, the way people used to get things going in the days before dating apps. The girl, Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams), laughs when Whitney introduces herself decorously as Whitney Elizabeth Houston. But before long, she has fallen in love with both the voice and the woman. The two move in together, even as Cissy scowls disapprovingly.

Cissy also feels competitive with her daughter, though there’s generosity, too: at a local nightclub, where Whitney usually sings backup for her mother the almost-star, Cissy almost literally pushes her daughter into the spotlight when she sees major record exec Clive Davis (played, with affectionate perfection, by Stanley Tucci ) in the audience. Suddenly, there’s a record contract: Whitney’s father, the immediately untrustworthy John (Clarke Peters), gets in on the action, setting the stage for future looting of his daughter’s earnings. Young Whitney makes her TV debut on the Merv Griffin show—her singing is less a full-on display of what she can do and more of an embrace, as if she yearned to take the whole world in at once. And before you know it, she’s a superstar, commanding a stadium full of people in a Spandex catsuit and fantastic gold-embroidered toreador jacket. We’ve already seen that she’s at least two people in one: a forthright young woman who knows what she wants, and a woman who gives too much away, to the people around her and maybe even to her audience.

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All of this is standard biopic stuff. But along with screenwriter Anthony McCarten, Lemmons—who has made some terrific movies in her long career ( Eve’s Bayou , Talk to Me), if perhaps not as many movies as we might wish—weaves events together deftly, highlighting the significant ones and eliding stuff that doesn’t matter so much. She turns Whitney’s pursuit of Brown (played by Ashton Sanders) into a comedy bit. After being wowed by him at the Soul Train Awards, she realizes he’s sitting right in front of her and begins whacking his head with her minaudiere. He finally turns around, barely prepared for the dazzler who’s standing there, laughing at him. Robyn, at Whitney’s side, witnesses all of it. She and her former romantic partner have brokered a kind of platonic devotion, but they’re fooling neither themselves nor anyone else. Whitney’s life is like a pile of dynamite just waiting for a match.

Ackie’s performance is wonderful: as Whitney, there’s something girlishly vulnerable about her, but you can see this is also a woman who has had to put up rigid guardrails. She bristles with fury when she fields the criticism that part of her audience has deemed her “not Black enough.” In one of the movie’s most intense scenes, she rushes to the side of her hospitalized father where, even as he’s gasping for breath, he hisses through his teeth that she had better pay back the money he believes she owes him . (It’s $100 million, even though he’s already bled her dry.) The movie’s finest scenes—there are quite a few of them—are the ones set in Davis’s office, where he pops in one demo cassette after another. The two listen together, but he says nothing before she does. Instead, he scans her face, wanting to know only what she thinks. She hears one song—it happens to be “How Will I Know?” —and brightens immediately; he gently counters that he’s not sure it has a hook. “I’ll give it a hook!” she says, and history proves that she did.

Is that an idealized version of the relationship between a superstar producer and his superstar? Maybe. (Davis is one of the movie’s producers.) But music biopics need to be equal parts stardust and sawdust to work. Similarly, Lemmons addresses Houston’s drug use discreetly—the movie Whitney keeps her crack apparatus in a nice little case—and her lowest moments pass fleetingly, often indicated by excessively messy hair.

But then, we already know the worst parts of the story—how low do we really need to go? This also saves I Wanna Dance with Somebody from the typical third-act problem of most biopics: the endless depiction of the long, slow decline. Lemmons is more interested in the root of Houston’s tragedy than its expression, anyway. At one point, Whitney laments that it’s her job to “be everything to everyone.” The list of performers who have been broken by stardom is long, but Lemmons suggests that Whitney had more than her share of burdens. Her sexuality and how she chose to define it, or not, should have been the least of her problems, yet it was treated as everyone’s business. In the early 1990s, I once went to hear Gospel great Shirley Caesar. It was a remarkable show, inclusive in the purest sense, and rapturous enough to make even a lapsed Catholic want to come to Jesus. But somewhere near the end, Caesar injected the line “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” into her patter and the spell was broken. The radiant energy of the music, the vibe, had been an invocation to levitate—but not for everybody.

In I Wanna Dance with Somebody, during an episode of romantic turmoil between Whitney and Robyn—Whitney has just slept with Jermaine Jackson, and Robyn is livid—Whitney confesses that she wants a “real” family, with a husband and kids. The mores she grew up with have stuck hard. “We can go to hell for this kind of shit,” she tells Robyn, waving her arms at the apartment the two share, a place where a fluffy cat sleeps on their bed, where they have coffee together in the morning. The tragedy of Whitney Houston has so many tiers: it’s a classic story about show-biz exhaustion, about being bilked by people who should be working in your best interest, about turning to drugs when you need to unwind after a show or rev up before one. But most of all, it’s a tragedy about having too many people, and too many forces, clawing away at your soul. Whitney deserved better. Long may she levitate.

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‘whitney houston: i wanna dance with somebody’ review: naomi ackie shines in kasi lemmons’ lovingly made biopic.

One of the all-time greatest female pop artists gets a bittersweet salute in this account of her triumphant three-decade career and the forces that dragged her down.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston in I Wanna Dance with Somebody.

I Wanna Dance With Somebody review – smooth Whitney Houston biopic

Naomi Ackie is excellent in the title role and the film delivers all the singer’s big hits, but it swerves the difficult questions

W hitney Houston has already been the subject of two startling and effectively competing documentaries: Nick Broomfield’s Whitney: Can I Be Me? from 2017 and Kevin Macdonald’s Whitney , which was released a year later. Each in its own way was hamstrung by legal issues and family pressure, although Broomfield’s was perhaps the more judicious and insightful. Now here is a music biopic on very traditional lines from screenwriter Anthony McCarten and director Kasi Lemmons: a smoothly watchable and well performed piece of work. It is almost a 144-minute narrative montage, and very avoidant on key issues – seemingly deferring to everyone who is still alive and suing.

British actor Naomi Ackie is very strong in the role of Houston (though with Whitney’s original singing voice dubbed). Houston was, of course, the glorious pop star who achieved mainstream white-crossover success but was crushed by sellout accusations, overwork, drug addiction, family strife and her volatile relationship with her notorious husband, Bobby Brown, and was tragically denied feelings for her best friend and assistant Robyn Crawford. She was found dead in the bathtub of her LA hotel room in 2012 at just 48 with evidence of cocaine use. Tamara Tunie and Clarke Peters give powerhouse performances as Whitney’s gospel-singer mom Cissy and overbearing dad John; Nafessa Williams is very plausible as Whitney’s loyal but finally heartbreakingly slighted lost love Crawford, and Stanley Tucci scene-stealingly plays avuncular record boss Clive Davis.

The movie skates over the still fraught subject of who was supplying Houston with drugs and who therefore effectively enabled her sad death, and it simply does not mention that Houston’s grownup daughter herself died just three years later in a grimly similar way. Documentaries have tiptoed around the allegations that family members had to source drugs on tour; this film conveniently invents a shifty-looking white guy who asks Houston for her autograph and then cash and drugs are surreptitiously exchanged under cover of Houston getting pen and paper from her bag. Nor does this film mention the theory from Macdonald’s documentary that Houston was sexually abused as a child by a cousin.

Stanley Tucci as record boss Clive Davis, with Naomi Ackie as Whitney.

It does however deliver the big scenes and big moments, especially her amazing performance of the national anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl. But a boilerplate music biopic like this usually runs in four stages: tough beginnings, success, crisis and redemptive comeback. Whitney’s life can’t give us the last of these and this film averts its gaze from the grim final reality of that hotel room in 2012, preferring to circle back in flashback to the triumph of Whitney’s performance at the 1994 American Music Awards , in which she sang her famous medley of I Loves You Porgy, And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going and I Have Nothing.

The ultimate questions are not really answered: was Whitney a gay woman whose problems stemmed from being imprisoned in the closet? Was she a gospel/R&B genius whose agonies arose from being a pop princess for white audiences? Or was it simply that she had to use drugs to relieve the stress of a touring schedule she was forced into by her big-spending family retinue? It could be any of these, and the film touches gingerly on each possibility. But it’s a muscular, heartfelt performance from Ackie.

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Whitney Houston
Stanley Tucci

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody Review

26 Dec 2022

I Wanna Dance With Somebody

Hollywood can’t seem to escape the formulaic music biopic: the recounting of a star’s life in the most conventional way possible, cramming every trial and tribulation into a single sitting. For every film that tries to break the mould ( Rocketman ), there's at least one more that follows the formula to the letter ( Bohemian Rhapsody ). The latest entry, Kasi Lemmons ’ I Wanna Dance With Somebody, largely follows this blueprint to the letter.

To the film’s credit, Lemmons’s solid encapsulation of Houston's life from strict church upbringing to superstardom portrays the singer as humanely as possible. Her early struggles to be herself, her relationships — particularly with friend and assistant Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams), mother Cissy (Tamara Tunie) and producer Clive Davis ( Stanley Tucci ) — and her commodification by the music industry as “America’s Princess” add fuel to the fire. It's a promising start.

It's Ackie's impactful performance that elevates this film.

As the legendary star, Naomi Ackie delivers a commanding performance, channelling every iota of Houston's mannerisms and magnetism; it's a career high point for the Star Wars actor. When the film excels — most notably Whitney’s performance of the famous ‘impossible medley’ at the American Music Awards, where she sang 'I Loves You, Porgy', 'And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going' and 'I Have Nothing' — Ackie’s uncanny embodiment reminds you of Houston's soul-stirring power, and why she was rightly named, by musician Andy Gill, as “the greatest voice of her generation”.

There are faithful recreations, too, of Whitney’s iconic music videos, and her famous performance at the 1991 Super Bowl. But despite its 146-minute runtime, the film struggles to cram everything in. The script by Anthony McCarten (who also wrote Bohemian Rhapsody ) rarely rises above surface-level analogies.

In capturing Whitney’s entire life, the Wikipedia-style exploration is not prepared to dive deeply enough into the emotional complexities and nuances of those key moments (such as the scrutiny, at the time, of Whitney’s music not being ‘Black enough’). The film's tendency to rush off to the next moment creates a tonal whiplash between scenes. It's Ackie's impactful performance that elevates this film; her epic, textured performance is what you'll remember after the lights go down.

Movies | 09 11 2022

TV and Streaming | Review: ‘Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with…

TV and Streaming

Things to do, tv and streaming | review: ‘whitney houston: i wanna dance with somebody’ is a well-acted biopic about not just a voice, but the voice.

Emily Aragones/AP

Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams) and Whitney Houston (Naomi Ackie) share a moment in "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody."

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Naomi Ackie recreates the 1991 Super Bowl "Star-Spangled Banner" sequence in "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody."

Stanley Tucci and Naomi Ackie in "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody."

Mostly, almost entirely, it is not British actor Naomi Ackie’s singing voice you hear as Whitney Houston in the smooth, enjoyable new biopic “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody.”

The unmatchable voice of the late pop phenomenon, not just any voice but The Voice, comes through, rangy, supercharged and ever-amazing, on the big hits newly remixed from Houston’s original vocals. Nobody’s trying to sing like Whitney Houston while playing the role of Whitney Houston.

And no, Ackie doesn’t physically resemble Houston, whose story here begins in 1983, singing in the Baptist church choir led by her mother, Cissy, and ends with Houston’s 2012 death in the bathtub of a Beverly Hilton suite.

Both no’s are fine with me. They’re choices, not mistakes — questions of casting (look-alike, or not so much?) and musical approach (subject’s voice, lip-synced by leading performer, or not?) every biopic of any musical great must answer.

This one is directed with a straightforward, humane touch by Kasi Lemmons (whose previous pictures include “Eve’s Bayou,” the criminally under-seen Don Cheadle-starring “Talk to Me” and “Harriet”). It has its standard-issue components and the air of a highly official presentation of events. The Houston estate representatives, along with Arista Records legend Clive Davis, Houston’s mentor and sounding board, are all over this thing.

Gratifyingly, screenwriter Anthony McCarten deals with Houston’s crucial lifelong friendship, eventual working relationship and (years before her marriage to Bobby Brown) romantic life with Robyn Crawford. Ackie’s loose, funny early scenes with Nafessa Williams’ Crawford give the movie what it needs to go somewhere.

The air of sensual freedom doesn’t last. “Be seen with young men,” warns Houston’s father, played by Clarke Peters, who wrests control of the empire once his daughter’s first album explodes in 1985. This was no time for coming out and staying on top, in the eyes of the media and certainly in the eyes of Houston’s immediate family. (Tamara Tunie plays Cissy, whose mantra for her daughter’s attack on a song is a simple but difficult: “head. heart. gut.”)

A sexually fluid superstar with deep roots in Christianity and the bad luck of falling prey to manipulators and users within her family circle never had a fighting chance at inner peace. “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” manages to suggest some nuance and ambiguity in Houston’s key relationships, and within her own ambitions.

The actors and director Lemmons accomplish what the screenplay does only partially: make us believe the circumstances and the behavior. Ashton Sanders’ Bobby Brown gives us the weasel but also the man. In a role slightly larger than required, I think, Arista legend Davis has the bonus of being played by ever-wry, ever-winning Stanley Tucci.

In the end it is Ackie’s show. If there’s anything missing from her idea of Houston, it’s the tension between the image — “the first Black white-friendly all-American girl,” as she calls herself at one point — and the fervent, family-bound, dutiful yet drug-addled performance beast, who toured ’til she dropped, very nearly. For all that, Ackie has a light touch, and a convincing handle on every stage of the life she’s depicting.

McCarten got an Oscar nomination for “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which was a pretty badly written, directed and edited biopic, but it made nearly a billion dollars worldwide because people like Freddie Mercury and Rami Malek did a nice job with him. I’m not sure audiences care a lot about quality in their showbiz sagas as long as the music’s there and they can sing along with it, or at least remember what it meant to them the first time they heard it.

“I Wanna Dance with Somebody” culminates with Houston’s walloping medley, at the 1994 American Music Awards,” of “I Loves You, Porgy” (from “Porgy and Bess”), “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” (from “Dreamgirls”) and “I Have Nothing” (from “The Bodyguard”). The movie’s two-hour, 20-minute running time, not counting end credits, is what it is because we hear and see several of Houston’s performance scenes in full, or close to full. I appreciate that. “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” easily twice the biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” was, takes its time where it should.

Another way to put it: It’s good.

“Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody” — 3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for strong drug content, some strong language, smoking and suggestive references)

Running time: 2:26

How to watch: Premieres in theaters Dec. 22.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

[email protected]

Twitter @phillipstribune

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‘Whitney Houston’ biopic gives good love to the troubled singer

Naomi ackie seems to channel the pop star in a film that doesn’t dig too deep but consistently entertains..

British actor Naomi Ackie plays the title role in “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody.”

TriStar Pictures

One could argue there wasn’t a pressing need for a Whitney Houston biopic, given that in the decade since Houston’s tragic passing at the age of 48, we’ve seen a plethora of TV specials, at least two documentaries, “Whitney: Can I Be Me?” and “Whitney,” a Lifetime biopic also titled “Whitney” and a thinly veiled Netflix film called “Beauty” that was clearly inspired by Houston.

And we can easily Google and find footage of Houston’s iconic performances, from her TV debut on “The Merv Griffin Show” at age 18 through her legendary rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the 1991 Super Bowl to her live performance of a trio of songs at the 1994 American Music Awards, plus all those music videos.

And yet. In a year when both Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley were the subjects of fictionalized biographies for the umpteenth time, why not Houston? Unlike the dazzling and dizzying “Elvis” and the exploitative and nightmarish “Blonde,” director Kasi Lemmons’ “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is the most straightforward, linear, by-the-numbers treatment imaginable — a veritable “Film-ipedia” entry that is more tribute than eulogy, more celebration than lamentation.

With astonishingly accurate re-creations of many of the touchstone performances in Houston’s career and a star-power performance from the British actor Naomi Ackie as Houston, along with stellar supporting work from a reliable cast of veteran and familiar faces, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is a consistently entertaining biopic that rarely digs beneath the surface despite the 2 hour and 26 minute running time. Houston basically gets the “Bohemian Rhapsody” treatment in that the film glosses over some of the darkest moments in her life. (In fact, Anthony McCarten is the screenwriter of both films), but it works beautifully as a feature-film biography highlighting one of the most incredible voices and one of the most infectious star personalities of a generation.

After a brief prologue in which we see Houston growing up in East Orange, New Jersey, in a house where her parents, John (Clarke Peters) and Cissy (Tamara Tunie) fought often and loudly, and Houston meeting and becoming friends and eventually lovers with Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams), it’s time for the “Star is Born” moments. Cissy sets her own spotlight ambitions aside and arranges for Houston to sing “The Greatest Love of All” at the New York nightclub Sweetwater’s with the legendary starmaker Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci, in full mensch-father-figure mode) in attendance, and just a couple of weeks later, Clive is introducing Houston to Merv Griffin and a national TV audience, and when Houston kills with a rendition of “Home” from “The Wiz,” she’s on her way to superstardom.

To play Whitney Houston, British actor focuses on what was going on inside

“I Wanna Dance With Somebody” has all the usual musical biopic moments, including the medley showing her racking up one No. 1 hit after another, moving into an outlandishly oversized mansion, singing in front of adoring crowds, etc., etc. Lemmons and the production design, costume and makeup artists do a fabulous job of re-creating the music video for “How Will I Know,” as well as Houston’s show-stopping performance of the national anthem at the Super Bowl (though the crowd scenes and the fighter jets are obvious CGI creations).

As for the darker elements: While Houston’s mother Cissy is controlling, but clearly loving and supportive, her husband John abuses his position as Houston’s manager all the way to his deathbed, where he demands to be paid. “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” briefly touches on the controversy at the 1988 Soul Train Music Awards, where protesters claimed Houston was too bland and white-sounding.

Cue the entrance into the story of one Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders, from “Moonlight”), a scurrilous player who latched onto Houston for respectability, while she seemingly was drawn to him in order to gain some sort of street cred. We all know how destructive and awful that relationship turned out to be. But while we see Houston getting wasted, and we know the fate awaiting her, we don’t see anything as stark and alarming in the film as we saw in real life, e.g., Houston’s disastrous “Crack is whack” interview with Diane Sawyer.

Naomi Ackie doesn’t bear an obvious resemblance to Houston, yet she somehow channels her, especially in the performance scenes. The voice we hear is almost exclusively Houston’s; as Ackie put it in an interview, “97.9% of it is Whitney.” Still, when Ackie takes the stage and lip-syncs to Houston’s epic performance of “I Loves You Porgy,” “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” and “I Have Nothing” at the 1994 American Music Awards, it’s a soaring, triumphant sequence reminding us of why we loved Whitney Houston and why we wish she had been able to fend off those demons and continue to sing with the angels.

Review: Superstar biopic ‘Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ is decidedly off-key

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When remembering the iconic life and career of Whitney Houston , there are many defining moments that instantly spring to mind: when she obliterated “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl in 1991, thereby rendering all other versions subpar, her soaring rendition of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” from “The Bodyguard,” or even her concert at Wembley Stadium in honor of Nelson Mandela. In the new biopic “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” those moments are acknowledged, albeit briefly. Instead, writer-producer Anthony McCarten has chosen to bookend this slog through Houston’s career and all-too-short life with … her performance at the 1994 American Music Awards?

Indeed, the 10-minute medley, which is re-created in full, was a virtuosic vocal performance of which only Houston was capable, but this deep cut seems an odd choice to open and close the film. It’s the kind of choice that makes one question everything in “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” a film that is not engrossing enough on its own to prevent one’s mind from wandering toward the nagging questions about who made these decisions and why.

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Director Kasi Lemmons is behind the camera, though McCarten , the writer of such award-winning biopics as “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “The Darkest Hour,” “The Theory of Everything” and “The Two Popes,” is the driving force, having purchased the rights to Houston’s life and written the screenplay on spec. Legendary music mogul Clive Davis is also a producer, as well as Pat Houston, Whitney’s sister-in-law, former manager and the executor of her estate. Davis is played by Stanley Tucci in the film as a warm father figure and confidant for Whitney, while Kris Sidberry has a small role as Pat.

British actress Naomi Ackie bravely takes on the impossible task that is portraying Houston. While Ackie transforms herself, and nails all the Whitney-style mannerisms and gestures, the fact of the matter is that Whitney Houston’s talent and beauty was otherworldly in a way that mere mortals simply cannot channel.

As the film, set to the beat of that steady music biopic rhythm, progresses from hit song to hit song, with careful selections from Whitney’s complicated life playing out in between, the whole thing starts to feel like a promotion of her back catalog. What McCarten chooses to reveal and conceal in Whitney’s story is telling, especially if you’ve seen any of the documentaries about her life; 2017’s “Whitney: Can I Be Me?” or 2018’s “Whitney.”

The sensitive details of Whitney’s life are approached with blunt instruments rather than incisiveness, and what’s left out seems indicative of who’s telling the story and why. Her romantic relationship with close friend Robyn (Nafessa Williams) is presented early and candidly, and the film implies her substance abuse issues are related to her repressed sexuality and the pressure to perform at the behest of her exploitative father John (Clarke Peters) and demanding, perfectionist mother Cissy (Tamara Tunie). Whitney’s drug use is presented as a solo endeavor, or as a part of her relationship with R&B bad boy Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders), while other members of her inner circle are let off the hook.

Lemmons is a talented and experienced filmmaker, but cinematically, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is inert, leaving one to ponder if she was hamstrung by producers, the script, or shooting during the pandemic. There is no sense of world-building or life beyond the edges of the frame. Lemmons and Ackie faithfully re-create some of Whitney’s memorable music videos, but it always feels like Ackie is wearing a Whitney Houston costume rather than inhabiting a fully realized human being.

As the film progresses toward Whitney’s tragic end, it starts to take on a distinctly ghoulish quality, especially a scene that imagines her frame of mind before her death. It’s a film that ultimately feels less like a celebration and more like further exploitation of the star, leaving us all with much more unsettling questions about Houston’s life and legacy. Sadly, the disappointing “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” doesn’t let Whitney rest in peace.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

Rated: PG-13, for strong drug content, some strong language, suggestive references and smoking Running time: 2 hours, 26 minutes Playing: Starts Dec. 23 in general release

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Whitney houston: i wanna dance with somebody, common sense media reviewers.

Superstar's rise to fame has mature themes, drug use.

I Wanna Dance with Somebody: Movie Poster

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Champions the value of surrounding yourself with t

Characters are based on real, flawed people who ma

Though Houston's life ultimately ended in a tragic

Some of Houston and Brown's fights get physical: H

Kissing, sometimes followed by characters shown wa

Strong language includes a use of "f---ing," plus

Houston gets visibly wealthier over the course of

Houston had acknowledged substance dependencies th

Positive Messages

Champions the value of surrounding yourself with trusted loved ones, but undercuts this message by demonstrating how Houston's family exploited her. Makes clear how much drugs and alcohol affected Houston's life and career.

Positive Role Models

Characters are based on real, flawed people who make plenty of mistakes. Houston was very talented and worked hard, but she had many struggles, some caused or made worse by family members who worked for her, including her father, and some connected to her marriage with Bobby Brown. He's shown to be an unpredictable partner: sometimes loving, sometimes abusive.

Diverse Representations

Though Houston's life ultimately ended in a tragic and early death, she was a young Black woman who broke through to the highest stratosphere of the entertainment business, serving as a powerful symbol for women, especially Black women, all over the world. Many other Black actors appear, and the movie was directed by a Black woman, Kasi Lemmons. Includes Houston's relationship with her lifelong best friend, Robyn Crawford: The two women were a romantic couple until rumors spread about Houston's sexuality.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Some of Houston and Brown's fights get physical: He pins her against a wall and, in a way that seems very threatening, tells her never to "disrespect" him; she responds by saying she's going to get a gun and "smoke" his "ass" (she doesn't).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Kissing, sometimes followed by characters shown waking up in bed together. A tumultuous marriage is part of this narrative.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language includes a use of "f---ing," plus "s--t," "damn," "hell," and "ass."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Houston gets visibly wealthier over the course of the movie, with private jets, fancy hotel rooms, and a spacious and luxuriously appointed house shown.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Houston had acknowledged substance dependencies that contributed to her untimely death. She's shown smoking cigarettes and marijuana and preparing to smoke crack: She gets a glass pipe out and lights a spoon, but viewers don't see her actually inhale. Many characters drink to excess, and the effect of both drink and drugs is evident in characters who are sloppy and incoherent. In a touching scene, Houston's attentive manager tells her that she should go to rehab, but Houston doesn't.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that I Wanna Dance with Somebody is a biopic about the life and career of Whitney Houston ( Naomi Ackie ), the talented singer who in the 1980s and 1990s had more hit singles than the Beatles. Most viewers will know going in that Houston died in 2012 at age 48. While her untimely death isn't depicted on-screen, viewers do see plenty of other iffy content as the film presents episodes from her life. Houston smokes cigarettes and marijuana and drinks wine and liquor. She's also shown rolling up a dollar bill in preparation for snorting cocaine and lighting a spoon and wielding a glass pipe in preparation for smoking crack. Drugs played a part in her death, as well as in her tumultuous relationship with singer Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders). They fight frequently and use substances together; in one scene, Brown threatens Houston physically, and she says she's going to get a gun and shoot him dead. Sexual content includes passionate kissing (including between Houston her lifelong best friend, Robyn Crawford, whom she was in a relationship with until rumors spread about Houston's sexuality), implied sex, and heated discussion of infidelity. Strong language includes "f---ing," "s--t," "damn," "hell," and "ass." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 4 parent reviews

It might not live up to the hypness, but it does deliver a strong performance!

The life of whitney houston on the origins, what's the story.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Whitney Houston ( Naomi Ackie ) was a groundbreaking musical superstar. WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY (named in honor of her most enduring hit) traces her life from teenage gospel soloist to background singer to pop icon ... and eventually to tabloid mainstay thanks to her substance abuse and contentious relationship with R&B star Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders). Tamara Tunie co-stars as Houston's mom, soul singer Cissy Houston, and Stanley Tucci plays Houston's longtime producer Clive Davis.

Is It Any Good?

Most viewers will know exactly where this biopic is headed, but it avoids becoming a complete downer by concentrating largely on Houston's successes rather than her flaws. As Houston, Ackie is vibrant and sympathetic. She's larger than life, just as Houston was herself, and inhabits the movie's many full-length performance scenes with spine-tingling star oomph. Fans familiar with Houston's onstage high points -- including the 1994 American Music Awards medley that many call her greatest TV turn and her extraordinary 1991 rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at Super Bowl 25 -- will likely break out in goosebumps watching Ackie powerfully reenacting those moments (although, no, she's not singing herself, except for a few moments when she sings between snatches of dialogue, though she does an excellent lip synch to Houston's vocals).

But in between high-point performances, things sag a bit. The movie rushes through many parts of Houston's story, a typical problem with films that try to condense decades' worth of life into a two-hour running time. And the movie doesn't seem to have a good idea of why Houston transitioned from being America's sweetheart to becoming a tabloid staple. Problems arise (Daddy steals Whitney's money, Brown cheats) and are just as quickly dismissed. Thankfully, I Wanna Dance with Somebody is refreshingly clear on the nature of Houston's relationship with her lifelong best friend, Robyn Crawford (they were a romantic couple until rumors spread about Houston's sexuality), and doesn't dwell on Houston's hit-bottom points: There's no mention of Brown and Houston's infamous reality show, for instance. Ultimately, though, you're left with the impression that you didn't learn much more about Houston than you knew going in, and that's a bitter pill to swallow considering the film's expansive 2-hour, 26-minute running time. But when Ackie takes the stage as Houston, this drama soars, and for fans, that may be enough.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the mix of fame, fortune, and drug problems that the music industry seems to serve up so frequently. According to Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody , do you think Houston's success influenced her substance abuse ?

Talk about TV and movie biopics. How true does a story have to be to a person's real life to be considered biographical? Is it appropriate to take creative license with someone's life story? What if it makes for better entertainment?

Have you ever learned something you didn't know about your favorite celebrity or media role model that was surprisingly negative? Did that change the way you felt about that person?

Movie Details

In theaters : December 23, 2022
On DVD or streaming : February 7, 2023
Cast : Naomi Ackie , Stanley Tucci , Tamara Tunie
Director : Kasi Lemmons
Inclusion Information : Female directors, Black directors, Female actors, Black actors
Studio : TriStar Pictures
Genre : Drama
Topics : Music and Sing-Along
Run time : 142 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : strong drug content, some strong language, suggestive references and smoking
Last updated : April 25, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ on Netflix, a Flatline Biopic of a GOAT Who Deserves Better

Where to stream:.

I Wanna Dance with Somebody
whitney houston

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This week on This Week in Biopics is Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (now on Netflix, in addition to VOD streaming platforms like Amazon Prime Video ), which casts Naomie Ackie as the wildly talented, popular and tragic pop singer. It has the potential to be a star-making role for Ackie, who we saw in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker , and will see next in Mickey 17 , Bong Joon-ho’s hotly anticipated follow-up to Parasite . But it also might be a thankless role, considering the following: One, the ubiquitousness of the subject. Two, the tragic arc of the singer’s life, which deserves more than a rote Behind the Music treatment. And three, the state of the biopic, especially the music biopic, in 2023; it’s pretty much dead these days, at least creatively. Harriet and Eve’s Bayou director Kasi Lemmons tries to get her arms around Whitney here, but it’s a frankly difficult task.

WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open in 1994. Whitney warms up her voice for a performance at the American Music Awards. But this isn’t really where we open – we soon jump all the way back to 1983, destroying any hope that the movie might be brave enough not to try encompassing 30 years in a person’s life in just under two-and-a-half hours. Whitney’s about 20 years old, letting rip, leading the church choir. Afterward, her mother Cissy (Tamara Tunie) cracks the whip: Enunciate! Know the melody inside and out! Cissy knows what she’s doing – she’s had a long career as a singer, and currently employs Whitney as a backup vocalist for club gigs. One night, Cissy spots superstar record exec Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci) in the crowd, forces Whitney to fly solo on ‘The Greatest Love of All,’ and history is made.

As Clive takes Whitney under her wing, her romance with Robyn (Nafessa Williams) is strained – to hear Whitney’s dad John (Clarke Peters) say it, you can’t be America’s Pop Star Sweetheart and be seen relationshipping around with another girl. She and Robyn duke it out a bit but decide to just be friends, with Robyn working as her personal assistant, and it works. Clive pops songwriter-demo cassettes – click, whirr, ch-chunk – and Whitney picks the “great big songs.” Then Whitney sings on Merv Griffin. Whitney sings in the studio. Whitney shoots a music video. Whitney hears her song on the radio and flips the eff out. Whitney sings in front of packed arenas. Whitney gets a bottle of Dom Perignon from Clive for every no. 1 hit, and she lines up seven of them. Whitney moves into a gigantic mansion. Whitney’s dad takes control of managing the business, which smells like a bad idea. Whitney is only 23.

It continues, but this stuff isn’t always so rosy. Whitney claps back at a radio DJ who accuses her of “not being black enough.” Whitney argues with her father. Whitney tells Clive, “I wanna do a movie.” Whitney does cocaine. Whitney meets Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders). Whitney sings the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. Whitney shoots The Bodyguard . Whitney sings in South Africa to honor Nelson Mandela. Whitney and Bobby get married even though he’s nothin’ but trouble. Whitney has a baby, I think – I glanced down for a sec, and all this stuff was just coming so fast. OK, I double checked: Whitney has a baby. Whitney gets less and less happy as the years go by. Whitney smokes crack. Whitney fights with Bobby. Whitney looks at the books, and her dad has been blowing money like crazy. Whitney has some rough live gigs. Whitney talks with Clive, who’s kind of her confidant. It continues like this, until it doesn’t.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: On the music-biopic scale, I Wanna Dance isn’t as nutty as Elvis , as cruddy as Bohemian Rhapsody , or as rousing as Ray . It’s about on par with middling Aretha Franklin bio Respect or The United States vs. Billie Holiday .

Performance Worth Watching: Unlike Austin Butler in Elvis or Jennifer Hudson in Respect , Ackie doesn’t actually sing here, but lip-syncs the heck out of ‘I Will Always Love You’ and ‘Greatest Love of All’ and all the other hits – which isn’t a knock on her, since nobody before or since Whitney did or ever will sing like Whitney. Ackie shows considerable actorly acumen, although she’s hampered by a screenplay that tries to do way too much.

Memorable Dialogue: Whitney gets righteous and confident:

Whitney: That’s what they want – America’s sweetheart.

Robyn: And you’re gonna give it to ’em?

Whitney: Just watch me.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Dramatized Wikipedia. I Wanna Dance with Somebody covers most every major Whitney life moment – and there are a lot of them – diligently. Some will praise Whitney’s estate for greenlighting an authorized biopic that dares to include her drug use, ugly moments from her marriage to Bobby Brown and sort-of-secret same-sex relationship. Those are facts from her life, and shouldn’t be ignored or glossed over. But Lemmons and screenwriter Anthony McCarten (who penned the similarly unimpressive Bohemian Rhapsody ) never get to the truth about Whitney, piecing together one scene after another after another, as if following a timeline instead of an emotionally engaging dramatic arc. It’s like writing a pop song with lyrics, melody and rhythm, but without a hook.

This isn’t to say the film is unwatchable. It’s perfectly watchable, but disappointingly in line with ancient music-bio formulae: Elated highs, histrionic lows, montages and, of course, musical performances, which feel perfunctory when they should be electrifying. The dialogue is an awkward blend of exposition and sloganeering: “Every song is a story. If it’s not a story, it’s not a song,” “Remember: Head, heart, gut,” “I just wanna sing.” The depiction of Clive Davis – a credited producer – borders on saintly, and the rest of the supporting characters are rendered too thin to be memorable, even bad boy Bobby Brown. The tempo is choppy, the narrative full of abrupt transitions lacking the connective tissue to properly orient us in terms of setting or the emotional state of our protagonist – one moment she’s confident, and the next, she’s lugubrious.

So the film follows Whitney’s slide from the top of the world into a depressive state. But why? Drug addiction? Public scrutiny? The high-pressure music business? Her failed marriage? Mental illness? Again, these are all things that happen, but the film is so busy covering all the bases like a historical documentary, it fails to truly address the substance of her character. There’s no arguing that Whitney was an all-timer, a generational talent (an assertion reiterated so frequently in the dialogue, it becomes grating). She’s one of the GOATs – and she surely deserves more than just a baseline-watchable biopic.

Our Call: I Wanna Dance with Somebody is dutiful at best, but it never pops. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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'I Wanna Dance with Somebody' review: Whitney Houston biopic sings a frustratingly familiar tune

A talented young musician becomes a pop icon in the 1980s, recording beloved songs during their precipitous rise before a fall due to bad influences and vices .

This just so happens to be the plot of both the new Whitney Houston drama “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” and the Al Yankovic comedy “Weird,” expressly created to parody musical biopics like the former. And although Naomi Ackie is fabulous as Houston , “I Wanna Dance” frustratingly clings to that familiar formula.

Directed by Kasi Lemmons (“Harriet”), the film (★★ out of four; rated PG-13; streaming now on Netflix ) is a cursory examination of Houston’s life story with a pretty great soundtrack, starting from a young girl with a huge voice singing in her New Jersey church choir – and under the watchful eye of her mother, Cissy (Tamara Tunie). Whitney is discovered by record producer Clive Davis ( Stanley Tucci ), quickly becomes a superstar, gets involved with (and marries) R&B artist Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders), and struggles with drug addiction before her death in 2012 at age 48 .

How accurate is it? Fact checking 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody,' the new Whitney Houston movie

“Somebody” is way too long at two hours and 26 minutes – almost every movie is guilty of that particular sin right now – but worse, it feels it. Anthony McCarten wrote this as well as “ Bohemian Rhapsody ,” a best picture nominee that was anything but, and Houston’s tale ultimately takes the same tack as his Queen biopic: a Wikipedia entry come to middling life on screen.

The pop singer’s songs lean toward the legendary – with tracks like “Greatest Love of All,” “I Will Always Love You” and, of course, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” – and Lemmons captures the electricity of Houston’s music in the movie’s best scenes. She re-creates the “How Will I Know” video for a nostalgic treat, and the chills are still real for Houston’s famous rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the 1991 Super Bowl. (One nitpick: Some performance scenes spend an oddly long time looking at the crowd. We get it, she was awesome.)

'I Wanna Dance with Somebody' star Naomi Ackie: Playing Whitney Houston made me 'anxious'

As with Rami Malek’s Freddie Mercury in “Rhapsody,” Ackie’s own voice is heard at times, though mainly she’s performing to Houston’s own signature vocals. And the actress does an exceptional job capturing the pop singer’s mannerisms and performance style in those moments.

It’s everything else in between that’s the real problem. “Somebody” runs through episodes in Houston’s personal and professional lives without fleshing out anything nuanced or surprising. Too often, it’s Clive coming to her with an opportunity (like the ambitious “Impossible Medley” or the movie “The Bodyguard” movie with Kevin Costner ), she initially balking before saying yes, and then it becoming a thing, rinse, repeat.

Whitney Houston: Her legacy and voice live on in Vegas hologram show

One of the narrative through-lines that might have people Googling afterward is Whitney’s romantic relationship with Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams). They met as teens and became girlfriends, and when Whitney is veered toward relationships with men, Robyn sticks around as Whitney’s assistant and tries to steady her – especially with Brown in her life – to no avail. That aspect and several others (such as the “Bodyguard” stuff and the national anthem taking place days after we went to war) would have made better focal points for a window-in-time story than the soup-to-nuts take.

Williams brings a grounded energy to Robyn, arguably the least-known main character in this real-life story, and it’s a decently acted affair overall: Like Ackie, Tucci nicely inhabits Davis as a mentor as Tunie does playing Houston’s mom. Sanders, so powerful in “Moonlight,” is a bit wasted here in a one-note role as Brown.

“I Wanna Dance with Somebody” takes a musically exciting, narratively watered-down look at a pop-culture icon’s life, and while it might be enough to satisfy many Houston fans, the greatest voice of her generation deserves more than a middling biopic.

Whitney Houston: National anthem rendition remains iconic 30 years after Super Bowl 25

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At not quite the halfway point of “Whitney,” a well-done but all-too-woeful wallow of a documentary that recounts Whitney Houston ’s swift rise to unparalleled stardom and tragic decline that ended in 2012 after she drowned in a hotel bathtub at age 48, there arrives a segment devoted to perhaps her brightest moment as an entertainer. That would be her uniquely stirring rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Super Bowl XXV in 1991, shortly after the start of the Gulf War.

Director Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland,” “ Touching the Void ”) recruits the song’s producer, Rickey Minor—one-time bandleader for “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno ”—to explain how he changed the song’s usual waltz tempo from 3/4 time to 4/4. That provided the then-27-year-old star enough room to breathe and pour her soul into her glorious performance. Yes, what you hear was pre-recorded but there is still a spark of spontaneity to it, given that it was Houston’s one and only take.

I was surprised how moved I was, even years later, after hearing her treatment of the national anthem again. Word to the wise: Appreciate that goose-pimply triumph when it arrives, because matters quickly begin to grow ever darker from there on. Unlike “ Amy ”—the 2015 Oscar-winning doc about Amy Winehouse , another bedeviled singer gone too soon—there are no personal lyrics to pay homage to her talent and capture her state of mind. Here, Houston’s music takes a back seat to digging for the reason why she never really felt comfortable in her own skin.

This is the second recent plunge into Houston’s life after last year’s “Whitney: Can I Be Me.” That more sensational effort made hay from the singer’s romantic relationship with Robyn Crawford, her supportive lesbian lover who was part of her life from age 18. Macdonald’s super-sized approach to the usual rise-and-fall tale earned the support of Houston’s estate, making it packed with insights from friends, associates, hired hands and family as well as never-seen footage. While their anecdotes initially are congenial and caring, it becomes horrifyingly apparent just how complicit her own loved ones were in indulging and capitalizing upon her more destructive tendencies while warping her sense of self.

We first hear Houston’s voice in between jarring flashes of her MTV video featuring her early hit, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” as she describes a recurring dream, “I am always running from the giant.” She was born to Cissy Houston , an in-demand backup singer for everyone from Aretha Franklin and Elvis who struggled to be a solo act, and theatrical manager John Russell Houston Jr., who bestowed the nickname of “Nippy” on his daughter when she was a fussy baby. Whitney grew up in Newark, N.J., and was often bullied over the lightness of her skin, which partially explains her persistent images of that giant in pursuit. When Houston got famous, she was bullied by those critics thought she was too pop and not enough R&B, even getting booed in 1988 when she won a Soul Train Award for her second album, “Whitney.”

Tabloids over the years placed much blame on her Norman Maine-ish husband of 15 years, singer Bobby Brown , whose flash of a career was on the verge of fading when the pair wed in 1992. (He briefly speaks on camera, refusing to discuss the effect that drugs had on her and how they led to her death.) But it turns out, her brother Michael and half-brother Gary Garland, a disgraced NBA player, admit that they, not Brown, first introduced their little teen sister to drugs long before he came along. As for Cissy, she was a dictatorial stage mother, guiding her angelic church choir standout of a daughter’s ascent into the spotlight, first as a teen backup singer, then as a fashion model and eventually as a recording artist. It turns out many relatives were riding the Whitney gravy train, getting paid just for hanging around backstage while the star did all the work. This globe-spanning sensation would end up losing most of the money she earned from her never-topped record of seven consecutive No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart as well as the soundtrack album for her 1992 movie debut, “ The Bodyguard ,” whose version of Dolly Parton ’s “I Will Always Love You” remains the best-selling single by a female artist in music history.

But according to her aunt, Mary Jones—who found a dead Houston face down in the bathtub—one of the contributing factors to the singer’s inability to mesh her sweetheart public image as Whitney and her more “ghetto” wild side as Nippy was a long-held secret. When her mother was on the road and her father was busy, she and her brother Michael were looked after by others. Unfortunately, one of their caretakers was their cousin, Dee Dee Warwick, Dionne Warwick ’s sister, who would sexually abuse the siblings. Not helping were the infidelities, especially her mother’s affair with their church minister, which led her parents to divorce

Houston’s greatest failure might have been the damage she and Brown did to their only child, Bobbi Kristina, with their physically abusive fights, their hard-partying lifestyle, their ugly public peccadilloes and a lack of parenting skills. It’s overwhelmingly sad that their 22-year-old daughter would be gone three years after her mom passed away. She, too, was found face down in a bathtub before dying months later after being put into an induced coma.

The dirt is definitely covered in Macdonald's film. There are villains in every corner. And Houston spent most of her final years looking and acting like one of the walking dead, despite stints in rehab. She was a wraith-like image of once-luminous self during in a 2002 TV interview with Diane Sawyer when she croakily admitted to using drugs before declaring that “crack was whack.” I wish Macdonald had included footage from Bravo’s 2005 train wreck of a reality show “Being Bobby Brown,” when Houston famously declared, “Hell to the no.” She did pull herself together for one last hurrah to play the church-going matriarch of a sisterly singing trio in the 2012 remake of the showbiz saga “ Sparkle ,” one of her favorite movies from her youth. But once the filming stopped, she brought the curtain down on herself.

Susan Wloszczyna

Susan Wloszczyna spent much of her nearly thirty years at USA TODAY as a senior entertainment reporter. Now unchained from the grind of daily journalism, she is ready to view the world of movies with fresh eyes.

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‘Sting’ Review: A Massive Alien Spider Terrorizes a New York Apartment Building in Creature Feature with More Legs Than Scares

David ehrlich.

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In other words, Latrodectus hasselti doesn’t need much of a glow-up to star in a creature feature — it’s already one of the most terrifying critters on Earth. What “Wyrmood” director Kiah Roache-Turner’s “ Sting ” presupposes is… what if one of these eight-legged killing machines wasn’t from Earth? What if it rode into our atmosphere aboard a comet that crash-landed into a dilapidated New York City apartment building, and was then adopted by an emotionally fragile pre-teen girl who named it after Bilbo Baggins ’ favorite sword and thought it was cool that her new pet doubled in size every time it fed, the spider eventually growing large enough for its human prey to appreciate the details of its freaky alien face before it ate them alive? Would that be bad? Spoiler alert: Yes. Yes it would. (Fun fact: Spiders can easily survive impact at terminal velocity, and so the premise of a redback landing on its feet after plummeting from the stratosphere isn’t quite as far-fetched as it sounds).

At the same time, however, Roache-Turner’s script is smart to recognize that spiders — even the super fucked up ones that drink their victims like organic milkshakes — are scarier for the fear they trigger than for the threat they represent. In fact, 12-year-old Charlotte (Aylya Browne) is so cool with arachnids that she can hardly contain her smile when she first discovers Sting hiding in her grandmother’s dollhouse (the film ’s credit sequence, in which the spider crawls through that dollhouse at a scale that teases its eventual size, promises a degree of cleverness that “Sting” is never quite able to match). A friendless, goth-adjacent tween who hopes to bond with her fraying stepfather Ethan (Ryan Corr) over the co-creation of their comic book “Fang Girl,” Charlotte seems like the type who might’ve been rooting for Shelob in “The Return of the King.” The only thing this plucky young adult is afraid of is losing what’s left of her place in the family, which feels like a distinct possibility now that her mother (Penelope Miller) and Ethan have a new baby boy all their own.

But Charlotte is good at keeping her fears at bay — she’s so good at it that she doesn’t even bat an eye when she learns that her new pet spider can parrot virtually any basic sound it hears (a severely under-utilized talent in the film). “Spiders don’t have vocal cords,” cautions Erik, the introverted and kinda sinister biology student who lives in one of the apartments upstairs (Danny Kim), “that is not a spider.” But whatever, that just makes Sting special. Besides, everything and everyone in New York is vaguely threatening to some degree; that’s what gives this city its character, and Roache-Turner is right to populate Charlotte’s building with all sorts of weirdos and creeps.

“Sting” unfolds with precious few surprises: The spider escapes its enclosure and jump-scares a few randos to death while the situation deteriorates in Charlotte’s apartment. The kills are competent if never particularly inspired, and the corpses are shriveled if never particularly gruesome. Vocal cords aside, Roache-Turner’s general adherence to the look and behavior of a redback spider is at odds with Sting’s extraterrestrial origins, and often feels as if it’s putting bumper lanes on the slaughterhouse of his imagination (at least WETA’s emphasis on puppetry over CGI allows these murders to retain their all too earthly arachnophobic thrill).

The same could be said of the apartment complex where the vast, vast majority of this movie takes place, which becomes less of a feature than a bug due to the obviousness of Roache-Turner’s foreshadowing — struggling cartoonist Ethan moonlights as the building’s super, and marvels at the trash compactor whenever he can — and the limited number of places where a spider the size of a German Shepherd might hide in an NYC residence. The logistical flaws of the film’s location eventually overwhelm the benefits that Roache-Turner mines from setting this story in such a pressure cooker of cloistered domesticity, where neither Charlotte nor Ethan can escape the desperate struggle to live together as a family.

Well Go USA will release “Sting” in theaters on Friday, April 12.

Escape from Germany

1939, Hitler's army was closing borders, and eighty-five American missionaries were in Germany serving their church. The escape of these missionaries from Nazi Germany is one of the most dra... Read all 1939, Hitler's army was closing borders, and eighty-five American missionaries were in Germany serving their church. The escape of these missionaries from Nazi Germany is one of the most dramatic events to occur in modern church history. 1939, Hitler's army was closing borders, and eighty-five American missionaries were in Germany serving their church. The escape of these missionaries from Nazi Germany is one of the most dramatic events to occur in modern church history.