Do we need a Whitney Houston biopic? With I Wanna Dance With Somebody , the answer is complicated
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Whitney Houston. Say it softly, it's almost like praying.
Not a day goes by that I don't miss Whitney. Her loss felt bigger, different, deeper than the superstars, icons, and legends we have had to say goodbye to far too soon. Her voice — that hypnotic, wondrous instrument — still sends shivers down the spine, more so than any singer before her (with the exception of Aretha) or since. So when a biopic was announced around The Voice, I had three questions: 1. Why? 2. Who's playing her? And 3. Why?
Biopics can be exploitative and so much of Whitney's life, the latter part especially, was brutally exploited. For those who love her, even from afar, the initial instinct is to protect her memory since we couldn't protect her while she was here. And she had only died 10 years ago. People have had decades to reckon with the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, of Elvis, of Freddie Mercury, all of whom have had biopics produced about them in recent years. In the case of Whitney, isn't it still too soon?
Everett Collection Whitney Houston in the 1992 film 'The Bodyguard'
As for who would play Whitney Houston, on the one hand it could be the role of a lifetime. On the other hand, it could be a complete disaster. Like "never show your face in this town again" disaster. To take on someone who looms so large in the cultural firmament is no enviable task.
But the best thing about Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody is Naomi Ackie, a Cockney girl from East London whose most major roles, at least stateside, have been in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker as ex-Stormtrooper Jannah, and as Lena Waithe's wife Alicia in the third season of Master of None.
Ackie's dedication to the role is evident in her flawless recreations of Whitney's speaking voice and her movements on stage, and the way she almost seems to vibrate on film as Whitney's voice comes through her. The mark of any successful portrayal of a famous figure is when the audience can forget, even for a half-second, that they're not watching the real thing.
Sony; George Rose/Getty Images Naomi Ackie transforms into Whitney Houston in the upcoming biopic 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody.'
"I got chills every time she did a take," says Stanley Tucci, who plays Arista record executive Clive Davis. "I mean, I literally couldn't — because it's Whitney's voice, obviously. But the way Naomi did it, you'd swear to God, she was singing it. I mean, also when she would sing, she also has a beautiful voice, but there's nobody who could ever sing like Whitney Houston. It was very, very moving."
The actress was, unsurprisingly, nervous to embody the life of an artist who had inspired her to become an artist, someone who had always seemed to just be during Ackie's 30 years on this planet.
"I've got friends who still call her Auntie Whitney," Ackie said two months before the film premiere, from her flat in London. "It feels like she's just a part of the fabric of being a person in the world. I've grown up with her, so I think for me she was so, and is still so up here, that it was very hard to try to bring her back down to earth to do my job and tell her story. That, to me, it filled me with fear to try and attempt that."
Emily Aragones/TRISTAR pictures
Back then, the film was still an idea, not yet released onto the world. But now, it is open to criticism, as is the actress lucky, or unlucky, enough to call herself Nippy. That this is Ackie's first time leading a movie, and the first time she's playing an American, could only have added to that fear.
"It was a lot of pressure and the fear of not wanting to get it wrong was big for me for a long, long time, and it caused me a lot of stress," Ackie said more recently. "But I think ultimately when I started to let go of the idea that there is no wrong and this is an impression — it's a poem of a person, it's an impressionist painting of a person instead of being exact — it kind of released me to explore my creativity more in regards to portraying Whitney."
I Wanna Dance With Somebody is able to get over the initial, important hurdle, casting, but the rest of the film succumbs to the pitfalls of most biopics. There is simply too much life to fit into two and a half hours. Biopics tend to work best when focusing on one moment or part of someone's life, then you can get a sense of who they might have been in those circumstances instead of condensing an entire existence into a series of vignettes.
Whitney's life was immense — the highest highs, the lowest lows — so the temptation to make a movie out of such a cinematic life is understandable. But the script by two-time Oscar nominee Anthony McCarten paints an already broad life with even broader strokes. McCarten was nominated for penning the screenplays for The Two Popes and the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything. Still, a straight white guy from New Zealand perhaps isn't the most suited to relate the story of a queer (something the movie does not shy away from) Black woman from New Jersey. No matter how global Whitney Houston was, at heart, she was just a Black girl living, and consumed by, the American Dream.
Emily Aragones/Sony
Director Kasi Lemmons (Eve's Bayou, Harriet) had a personal relationship with Whitney, having met her in the mid '90s and commissioned to write two screenplays for her. "I got to meet her, and I got to see her as the woman who was behind the icon," Lemmons says of Whitney. "That moved me tremendously. I met her father at the same time, so I got to know John Houston and that dynamic, and how she was very different than the image, and how he was very protective of the image. I knew all that going into the movie, and I tried to bring all that into the film."
While I Wanna Dance With Somebody is obviously a labor of love and admiration for Whitney Houston, it doesn't do her justice. The first hour and a half ends up being a highlight reel recreating (rather successfully) her biggest videos and performances and grazing over her relationship with Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders), while the last half crams in her decline due to drug addiction, the loss of her once immaculate voice, and her untimely death at age 48, on the eve of the Grammys on Feb. 11, 2012.
Thankfully, her death isn't dramatized. I think it's important to know that going in, so you're not terribly dreading, as I was, the final frames. Despite Whitney's tragic end, I Wanna Dance With Somebody tries to end on an uplifting note — well, more like several uplifting octaves, as Lemmons recreates one of the most vocally ambitious live performances ever aired on television, Whitney's 1994 medley at the American Music Awards of "I Loves You Porgy"/"And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going"/"I Have Nothing." Just writing those song titles makes my vocal chords hurt.
Emily Aragones/TRISTAR pictures
It's nearly ten minutes of nonstop flourishes, vibrato, and straight-up belting, and because it's Whitney Houston, it's thrilling. Its length, however, did make me wonder why, of all the performances, Whitney's rendition of the "Star-Spangled Banner" at the 1991 Super Bowl wasn't reproduced in full. Among her iconic, indelible moments — and there are many — that one stands above the rest, yet we only get about the last 90 seconds or so.
In that performance, Whitney Houston became part of American history. At the time, she was the symbol of America. After years of tabloid tales and late-night jokes and just the way she died, it's easy to forget how immense her life was, and how much that can weigh on a person. Much like the movie's title, the movie itself doesn't say much about Whitney's life, but it does help place her legacy in context, and serves as a reminder of what made her so amazing in the first place.
One could accomplish the same thing with a bottle of wine and a trip down a YouTube of her live performances — which I highly recommend — but if anyone's life deserves a movie screen, it's Whitney Elizabeth Houston. It may not be the real thing, but for a half-second, you might forget.
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