Whitney Houston Deserves Better Than Her Terrible Biopic

Advertisement

New This Week

Ranting about the Whitney Houston biopic.

Crying about Below Deck.

Laughing with Edie Falco.

Basking in the Drew Barrymore moment.

Gifting you all happiness.

Whitney Houston Deserves Better Than This

The worst part of I Wanna Dance Somebody is how it makes you feel as it approaches its interminable end. “Please,” you think. “Will Whitney Houston just stop singing?”

It’s an egregious sin to make your audience tire of hearing Houston’s voice, but that’s just what the new biopic, now in theaters, does. At a running time of nearly two-and-a-half hours, I Wanna Dance With Somebody endeavors to be an all-encompassing document of Houston’s entire career: Her discovery by Clive Davis. Her meteoric rise. Her unparalleled success. Her drug use. Her relationships with Robyn Crawford and Bobby Brown. Her comeback, and her death. It’s a Wikipedia article as a film, and at some point, you just want to stop scrolling.

That’s a shame, because there is a lot to admire.

Naomi Ackie, who plays Houston, is incredible. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone so luminous on the screen. She nails Houston’s speaking voice and her mannerisms, and calibrates them through each stage of the performer’s life. You never feel like Ackie is playing older or younger than her age; she simply inhabits Houston at every moment. Especially during scenes that should feel like they were written for a Lifetime movie (of which there already has beena terrible oneabout Houston), Ackie taps into a vibrancy and emotional immediacy that not only stops you from cringing, but also overwhelms you with excellence.

But watching I Wanna Dance With Somebody is, overall, a strange experience. It is a crowd pleaser. It features all of Houston’s most iconic performances. At my screening, people applauded after each song, as if they were watching Houston herself sing. (Ackie lip syncs, impressively, to recordings of Houston’s voice.)

The movie borders on being a concert film, which is fan service that it’s too preoccupied by. There is so much insistence on meticulously portraying every memorable note, movement, and glance, leaving the scenes that are supposed to reveal what it took for Houston to produce them to seem like an afterthought.

Yes, it’s a thrill to watch the film’s depictions of Houston singing “Home” in her debut on Merv Griffin’s talk show, her a capella opening to “I Will Always Love You” while shooting the music video, and her comeback performance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. I got chills and teared up at the frame-by-frame mimicry of her famously singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. I also have watched all of those performances—many times—on YouTube, with Houston actually doing the singing.

Because we’re in the digital age, and historical clips of major pop-culture moments are readily available, movies and TV shows are now regularly recreating them exactly. It’s as if studios are already planning for the inevitable side-by-side comparison that will go viral on Twitter or TikTok. But that becomes unbearably robotic. By the third or fourth (or sixteenth) time I Wanna Dance With Somebody does that with Houston’s performances, it’s exhausting.

The performances run so long and are so exact in the copying of Houston’s mannerisms that, especially knowing that you’re not hearing Ackie sing live, the experience verges on watching drag. That is, in a way, high praise—it’s an artform, and one that I love. But at some point the uncanniness becomes bizarre. It becomes clear that someone paid a lot of money and spent a lot of time to remake the videos you can already watch on YouTube.

More surprising is the film’s exploration of Houston’s private life. I have to say that I didn’t expect the movie to dive as deep as it did into Houston’s relationship with Crawford, from friend to lover to manager and back again. The last third of the film also attempts to offer what you crave for the whole running time, providing the humanity behind the gossip in its depiction of her drug use. These scenes are a tremendous showcase for Ackie, and are also the film’s greatest justification for existing in the first place.

Music biopics are meant to provide this level of insight into an artist. We want to learn something about a celebrity we revered, to understand her as a person. Instead, I Wanna Dance With Somebody is relentlessly committed to its recreations of Houston performing. The music is obviously important, and it’s a thrill every time the opening notes to one of Houston’s hits begin and you know you’re about to watch a performance. You want to cheer at the end of that Super Bowl moment, and the film lets you do that. But it should not stand in the way of creating character depth—yet often does.

I’m harping on that because the movie does. It is so long, and so much of the running time is devoted to those musical numbers. When the scene happens where Houston performs “I Will Always Love You” for the first time, I thought the movie was ending and that it was just charting that part of her career. It turned out that there was still nearly 20 years and more than an hour that the film planned to cover.

There’s something cynical about this bullet-points approach to Houston’s life and career that comes into focus when you learn that the writer, Anthony McCarten, also scripted Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic of Freddie Mercury. That film was a huge hit, and Rami Malek won an Oscar for so believably lip synching to Queen’s songs.

Critics of the movie, myself chief among them, blasted its exploitation of the darkness in Mercury’s life for plot-point scandal, rather than attempting any sort of real, human exploration. That reductiveness, of course, helped Bohemian Rhapsody stick to a by-the-numbers structure that would have anyone clapping at the end. But that film’s portrait of an incredible artist was ultimately superficial. I Wanna Dance With Somebody suffers in the same way. The film feels like the cinematic manifestation of a producer saying “let’s do the Bohemian Rhapsody thing, but with Whitney.”

After I Wanna Dance With Somebody shows Houston’s death, it then recreates Houston’s jaw-dropping medley at the 1994 American Music Awards in its entirety. For 10 minutes, Ackie replicates every jaw movement and gesture that Houston made while performing songs from Porgy and Bess, Dreamgirls, and The Bodyguard. It’s considered Houston’s greatest live performance, a point that the film teases several times before we finally see it at the end.

You want to celebrate Houston’s brilliance, so you go along with it, even though it’s a lip synched version of something you can actually watch her do right now. But then the movie exposes that illusion. As the credits roll, it starts playing the actual footage of Houston herself on that night. It left me with the biggest “So what was the point?” realization I’ve ever had while watching the movie. What was shocking was that I Wanna Dance With Somebody never bothered to even contemplate that question itself.

Crying While Watching Below Deck…

It can be hard to empathize with reality TV stars. But I have never felt more in tune with anyone than I did with the cast of Below Deck,as they wept while Captain Lee said he was leaving the show.

Lee Rosbach has been at the wheel since Below Deck premiered in 2013. He’s the ideal version of a no-nonsense boss, who operates from a place of warmth; the reason he expects so much from his crew is because he loves them so deeply and believes in their potential for greatness.

While anyone who watches Bravo has differing opinions about their favorite shows’ casts, there is one thing that has always been unanimous: Captain Lee is the best. Now, it’s devastating to see him go.

I will never admit how often I cry while watching Bravo, but Captain’s Lee’s farewell episode ranks among my sobbiest viewings.

Since Season 10 of Below Deck premiered, Lee had been transparent about his health problems. He was struggling with nerve issues that affected his mobility. “My mind’s there. My heart’s there. My body just won’t cooperate,” he said on this week’s episode. “I never quit. But this time I have to.”

He showed incredible graciousness and humility as he made the announcement to his crew. “I probably overstayed longer than I should have, but I'm pretty fucking stubborn,” he said, berating himself in a confessional scene later for being a burden to their success.

As the captain of a ship, it’s clear that Lee is a father figure to the people he works with. But that extends to viewers, too. As he got choked up talking about his departure, you could hear everyone watching in real time wail, “Dad!!!”

As television, the sequence was beautifully produced. It was especially touching to watch Rachel, the season’s chef, and Fraser, its chief stew, sob into each other’s arms. In a previous season, Captain Lee had been incredibly generous with Rachel, as she battled some personal demons that could have gotten her fired, and it’s been so nice to watch her blossom after he gave her a second chance. Fraser is Below Deck’s first openly gay chief stew, and, watching the show, you could see how much pride Captain Lee took in giving him that opportunity. In their reaction to his departure, you could tell that they recognized these things, too.

It was also really lovely to see that Bravo brought in Below Deck: Mediterranean’s Captain Sandy Yawn to replace Captain Lee as he recovers. It lent a warranted sense of gravity to the moment. It didn’t just swap Captain Lee out for a TV-ready substitute who happened to be on-call. The network brought on someone as prodigious as he was, both on the waters and in the fan community, to take over.

It was such a nice episode and, I suppose, a fitting end to the year. I should have expected that I was going to end 2022 heavily crying while watching an episode of Below Deck.

Edie Falco Is All of Us

This week, Edie Falco said what all of us were thinking: “Avatar 2 must have come out years ago, right?” The difference is, Edie Falco actually starred in the movie.

The fact that there has been so much time between when Avatar was first released 13 years ago and the sequel finally hitting theaters this month has been a long-lasting joke. It’s not so much a joke, though, as it is a reality. When the trailer played before a screening of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, my jaw hit the floor. It wasn’t just because the footage was stunning. It was because I couldn’t believe it existed at all.

Falco gets that. She appeared on The Viewthis week to promote her role in Avatar: The Way of Water. During the interview, she revealed that she had shot the movie so long ago that she assumed it had come out already and flopped at the box office. “I thought, ‘Oh, I guess it came out and didn’t do very well,’ because I didn’t hear anything.” That, to her, was more believable than how long it took for the film to finally be released.

It was a perfect talk show moment. It was candid, self-effacing, and mocked Hollywood’s self-importance in a way that I suspect all actors wish they could. (Watch it here.)

The Week in Drew Barrymore

It is the greatest gift of 2022 that, on any given week, Drew Barrymore is in a new viral video.

The Drew Barrymore Show is the most wonderfully strange talk show, a perfect blend of entirely bonkers and movingly earnest that only works because it is so authentically Drew. These clips from her show go viral because they’re so bizarre, yes, but they are also shared out of pure love: We’re so grateful that she has this platform.

This week was a treasure trove for Drew fans. It began with a clip of Barrymore’s appearance on Ziwe, in which she was charmingly self-aware about her own battiness. As she trails off on about a dozen different tangents, Ziwe seems to zone out to the point of disassociation. Then, later in the week, came the clip of Barrymore interviewing White Lotus star Aubrey Plaza, who expressed her desire for Barrymore to be her “mommy,” while the host told he she’d love for Plazza to be in “my womb.”

Roughly 70 percent of my laughter this week has been because of these videos. I hope they have the same effect on you.

Name a More Iconic Trio

My Christmas present to you is this photo of Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Seymour, and Liza Minnelli hanging out together. Have a safe and happy holiday, everyone.

Living: After you inevitably watch Bill Nighy in Love Actually this week, watch his stunning performance in this film. (Now in theaters)

Women Talking: Easily one of the best movies of the year. Give it all the Oscar nominations. (Now in theaters)

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story: It’s finally on Netflix! Long live the Kate Hudsonnaisance! (Now on Netflix)

I Wanna Dance With Somebody: Do yourself a favor and just watch YouTube videos of Whitney Houston instead. (Now in theaters)

Babylon: Save your Margot Robbie stanning for Barbie. (Now in theaters)

Like our take on what to watch?
Check out our see skip newsletter!

Advertisement

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.

© 2022 The Daily Beast Company LLC I 555 W. 18th Street, New York NY, 10011

Privacy Policy

If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, click here to view this email in your browser. To ensure delivery of these emails, please add [email protected] to your address book. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, or think you have received this message in error, you can safely unsubscribe.