By Jonah Naplan

December 23, 2022

Whitney Houston’s messy and overlong biopic, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” doesn’t do a whole lot besides allowing Naomi Ackie to test her singing abilities in a powerful and important role surrounded, in contrast, by ineffective things.

We all know the name Whitney Houston. She’s behind some of the most popular hits of the late 80s and 90s, including but not limited to, the film’s title song, “I Will Always Love You,” and “I Have Nothing”—all of which are performed in the film. We know that at the age of 27, she famously sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Super Bowl XXV. We know that she starred as a fictional singer alongside Kevin Costner in 1992 in “The Bodyguard.” And we know how she tragically died way too soon in 2012.

The movie is well aware of the famous singer’s death too, but often feels restrained and terrified to show how that demise came about in the third act. It’s one of the several instances in which “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” milks the heck out of its story, merely making it more accessible and fit for a PG-13 rating. Like several other musicians who have already had their shot with big-screen life story adaptations, Whitney Houston did not live such a family-friendly life, especially when hers reached its end.

Famously, Whitney Houston died of a drug overdose and then an accidental drowning in her hotel room in Beverly Hills, California. Her drug addiction is only directly mentioned a few times, if I can remember correctly, although director Kasi Lemmons does choose to depict Houston’s time in rehab. Her meetings with Clive Davis (a respectable Stanley Tucci) are the only times when the film truly pushes to tell the audience about serious topics regarding her personal life. Everything else is painted with glitter and glam, in a bland and sometimes even lifeless light.

It is commendable, however, that the movie does not skimp on showing the lesbian romance between Whitney and best-friend-turned-lover, Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams). At the time, Whitney Houston triggered huge controversy and outrage over her queer identity, but more famous was her romance with R&B singer Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders). The movie spends plenty of time on that relationship, but doesn’t forget to honor Houston’s obvious LGBTQ+ representation not so hidden in the framework.

But as the film progresses—only once referencing Houston’s appearance as the Fairy Godmother in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella”—it becomes clear that the movie is rigid on only portraying the most famous, quintessential elements of Houston’s career, and doesn’t much care to go in-depth with the life of who some regard to be the greatest singer of her generation. There are many good individual elements within “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” but they never seem like enough in a story always set to collapse. I mentioned Tucci’s performance previously, but the star of the whole show, Ackie, is also quite good. Even though the movie isn’t stable structurally, the woman at the film’s center often rules the screen with a certain determination that is also not without charm. She saves the movie a few times, particularly when the film lets its production department take the wheel, and devolves into some musical numbers, that even I can admit are toe-tapping.

But the biggest problem with musical biopics nowadays is that although performance scenes can be fun, and vibrant, and sometimes even magical, the purpose of a biography about one singular person (or sometimes a group of people), stretched out to an entire movie’s-worth of a runtime is to teach the viewer about their life. And although a musician can sell out arenas often, that’s not all they’ve ever done. And Whitney Houston did a good bit before and in between her years of performing and fame. To an extent, ticket holders going to see “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” are mainly doing so for Whitney’s performance at the Super Bowl and her appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, but including only those things in a movie that promises to show more about a celebrity’s inside life is like making a film about The Rock, but only talking about his career in Hollywood.

Whitney Houston had a life in Newark, New Jersey with her parents, Cissy (Tamara Tunie) and her stern father John (Clarke Peters), long before she was discovered by Clive Davis in 1983. But the movie says nothing about her childhood and begins with Houston, already a blooming late high schooler, at the beginning of the film. And then, very suddenly, the movie jolts us into a seemingly already bustling career for our protagonist, not stopping to appreciate what helped to develop Whitney’s incredible talent in the first place.

There’s a subplot or two about how Whitney Houston was used as a “human ATM” in the middle of her career, and how she questioned her love for Bobby once they had their first child. They’re all things that could have been explored much more thoroughly, but are instead crammed into a bloated movie that feels like it manages to show way too little and way too much simultaneously. Some modern-day musical biopics are pretty good—I enjoyed Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” from June—but “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” is an example of why these kinds of movies can become so easily exhausted and soulless, even before they begin to break into that instant gratification commonly affixed with big, brassy musical numbers. Naomi Ackie gives it her all, but even she can’t save a film blindsided by the singer, rather than the story.

Now playing in theaters.