Review of I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY: Witnessing Whitney

January 9, 2023

Whitney Houston was one of the biggest singing pop stars from the 1980s. Her first two albums "Whitney Houston" (1985) and "Whitney" (1987) both reached Number One on the Billboard album chart. Since her second single from her debut album, "Saving All My Love for You" went to Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1985, her next six consecutive singles all followed suit, all the way to the fourth single from her second album, "Where Do Broken Hearts Go," peaking at the top in April 1988. 

As with many superstar artists, Whitney's private life was also fair game for the tabloids. Contrary to her wholesome media image, Whitney decided to marry former New Edition member Bobby Brown, who was then also always in the news for cases of battery, drunk driving and drug possession. Their marriage gave them a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, who was born in 1993. However, by 1999, Whitney's good girl reputation took a turn for the worse as she became unprofessional career-wise because of her addiction to illegal drugs.  

This by-the-numbers biopic checked all the boxes about what we already know about Whitney's life. We first meet Whitney (Naomi Ackie) training in singing gospel songs under the strict mentorship of her own mother Cissy (Tamara Tunie). Her singing prowess eventually caught the attention of music producer Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci), who then immediately signed her to Arista Records. She met Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders) at an awards show and they began dating against public opposition. 

However, there were some details which I did not know about and was surprised to learn from this movie. Whitney apparently had a female best friend Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams) even before she became famous, and the two actually had a romantic relationship. Whitney also had a close relationship with her father John Houston (Clarke Peters), who insisted on controlling Whitney's career and finances. He mishandled Whitney's fortune at one point and wanted her to do a world tour to get their company out of the rut.

Naomi Ackie's facial differences from Whitney Houston can sometimes be distracting, but in some scenes, there can be similarities between them which can be so uncanny. Ackie seemed to have been able to capture a lot of Whitney's manner of speaking and mannerisms, as we've seen in videos of her live shows.  The singing voice we hear though is almost all Whitney's herself (95%), so Ackie's lipsynching and impersonating skills were amazingly on point, as they all looked like very realistic singing performances by Whitney herself. 

What I liked about this biopic was how it was practically a jukebox musical about her life, so we can hear almost every hit song she had in her stellar career. There were recreations of her music videos for "How Will I Know", "I Will Always Love You," It's Not Right, But It's Okay," and her historic rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 1992 World Cup. Call me idealistic, but I felt I really did not need to know all those negative details about her life. Her musical legacy alone should be enough to remember her by. 6/10.