‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ review: Whitney Houston biopic sings a frustratingly familiar tune
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; in theaters Friday) is a cursory examination of Houston’s life story with a pretty great soundtrack, starting from being a young girl with a huge voice singing in her New Jersey church choir – and under the watchful eye of her mom Cissy (Tamara Tunie). Whitney gets discovered by record producer Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci), quickly becomes a superstar, gets involved with (and marries) RB artist Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders), and struggles with drug addiction before her death in 2012 at 48.
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“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 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.)
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Like 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 Bodyguard” movie with Kevin Costner), she initially balking before saying yes, and then it becoming a thing, rinse, repeat.
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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.