movie review for i want to dance with somebody

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody

About 25 minutes into “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” an inarticulate, slapdash musical biopic about the famed songstress, the film reaches its high point: Arista Records head Clive Davis ( Stanley Tucci ) enters the nightclub where Houston ( Naomi Ackie ) and her gospel legend mother Cissy Houston ( Tamara Tunie ) are performing. When the latter sees the A&R man taking his seat, she fakes losing her voice, clearing the way for her daughter to sing “The Greatest Love of All.” Her vocals climb, soaring to the familiar majestic heights that catapulted her toward stardom. We watch Davis watch her. In one close-up, you can almost imagine dollar signs dancing around his head. The scene is so stirring one woman in my screening pulled out a lighter and waved her flame to the rhythm of Houston’s unforgettable vibrato.

During that brief scene, you can imagine “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” gravitating toward a clear-eyed narrative about the annihilation of a voice, talent, and person by flattening her identity for the commodification of an image. But in working with an unfocused script by Anthony McCarten (“ Bohemian Rhapsody “), director Kasi Lemmons flounders when rendering the woman beyond the tabloid cliff notes of her life. 

“I Wanna Dance with Somebody” takes great pains to craft an intuitive throughline for Houston’s life, as we briefly open in 1994 at the American Music Awards before flashing back to 1983 in New Jersey. But how Lemmons ultimately maneuvers back to the AMAs makes little emotional or logical sense. 

Still, for a short time, we’re ready to absorb the saga with Lemmons. We see Houston (her friends call her “Nippy”) meeting and forming a lesbian relationship with Robyn Crawford ( Nafessa Williams )—Lemmons should be complimented for not avoiding this portion of the singer’s personal life. Houston eventually signs with the steadfast Clive Davis, takes advice from her parents Cissy and the selfish patriarch John Houston ( Clarke Peters ) to tone down her butch image in lieu of becoming America’s princess. Soon enough, she begins racking up hits. Unfortunately, these scenes rush by, to the point that their brusque speed fools you into believing that Lemmons is merely trying to get to the real story she wants to tell.

But that story never arrives. Instead, the film hops and skips through the highlights of Houston’s career: making the music video for “How Will I Know,” choosing the demo tape of the titular “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” from Davis’ pile of cassettes, and performing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Super Bowl XXV. All the while, hampered by her drug addiction, her relationship with Crawford frays. Instead, she chooses her image, career, and desire for Bobby Brown (played by Ashton Sanders , who gives the R&B singer a bundle of tics and a vocal cadence alarmingly close to DMX).

The editing choices by Daysha Broadway (“Insecure”) are driven by a bare necessity to advance the narrative but not any emotional momentum. Some of her dissonant decisions are unintentionally comedic in an “It’s so bad, it’s entertaining” way, like when Houston’s father threatens his daughter with litigation from his hospital bed—the next cut is to his funeral.

And the way that Lemmons stages certain scenes doesn’t cohere with how humans communicate. One sequence, occurring in the singer’s dressing room, sees Crawford, Houston, and Brown discussing business. Rather than cutting between each person, Lemmons stages the trio in a three-shot in which they don’t face each other but stare awkwardly into a dressing room mirror, giving the appearance of them stiffly speaking to their reflections. 

We never get a sense from this film of Houston as a person; Ackie might as well be a hologram performing these songs. Her marriage to Brown lacks a visible arc; the role that Crawford played in Houston’s life after Brown entered is never discussed (though Williams pulls some laughs through her energetic verve); and Cissy and John serve little purpose (Peters makes some very odd, grating choices). But you can’t blame any of the actors for coming up short. The script, the editing, the cinematography, and every component of what makes a movie—aside from the impeccable costuming—undermines the performances here.    

The jukebox element of a musical biopic will always prove a hit. The film, however, must be as transcendent as the songbook. None of the performances, unfortunately, are filmed well by cinematographer Barry Ackroyd (“ The Hurt Locker “). The lighting proves inconsistent, and his shaky cam style plays incongruously with the musical staging. Only the tunes themselves make these scenes remotely watchable. It’s a sad development, and for a director of Lemmons’ caliber, it is particularly shocking.   

It’s never clear what destination this film is heading toward, or what climax we’re climbing up to. The score by Chanda Dancy turns unbearably soapy and melodramatic as we fast-forward to Houston’s 2009 performance on Oprah, and then her life in Los Angeles in 2012. These events are boxes on a checklist. They would bloat the movie if a scene ever played long enough to fulfill the definition of a scene.

What did Black superstardom mean during the 1980s? What does the erasure of Houston’s queer relationship and its modern acceptance say about the strides we’ve made in Black queer representation? Who was Houston as a mother, as a businesswoman, and as the leader of her career? The script asks these questions but never takes any considerable interest in their answers. 

Much like with “ Respect ,” last year’s Aretha Franklin biopic, the events here all feel meaningless when trying to hit every point of Houston’s life. We do arrive back at the AMAs performance, a high-wire vocal act that thrills yet doesn’t provide an exclamation point to the biopic. The credits then feature clips of the real-life Houston performing, once again undermining Ackie’s turn as the singer. The indelible, unmatched voice of Houston may live on, but “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” lacks the ingredients of what made Houston a force that permanently altered every person who truly heard her.

Now playing in theaters. 

Robert Daniels

Robert Daniels is an Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) and Critics Choice Association (CCA) and regularly contributes to the  New York Times ,  IndieWire , and  Screen Daily . He has covered film festivals ranging from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto. He has also written for the Criterion Collection, the  Los Angeles Times , and  Rolling Stone  about Black American pop culture and issues of representation.

• Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston
• Ashton Sanders as Bobby Brown
• Stanley Tucci as Clive Davis
• Nafessa Williams as Robyn Crawford
• Lance A. Williams as Gerry Griffith
• Tamara Tunie as Cissy Houston
• Clarke Peters as John Houston
• Daniel Washington as Gary Houston
• JaQuan Malik Jones as Michael Houston
• Kris Sidberry as Pat Houston
• Tanner Beard as Günther
• Bailee Lopes as Bobbi-Kristina (8-10 Yrs old)
• Jennifer Ellis as Lisa Hintelmann
• Anthony McCarten

Cinematographer

• Barry Ackroyd
• Chanda Dancy
• Daysha Broadway
• Kasi Lemmons

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‘Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ Review: Her Lonely Heart Calls

This film from Kasi Lemmons is a jukebox retelling of Whitney Houston’s parabola from sweatshirts to sequins.

By Amy Nicholson

No one could sing like Whitney Houston, and Kasi Lemmons, the director of the biopic “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” only rarely asks her lead, Naomi Ackie, to try. This is a jukebox retelling of Houston’s parabola from sweatshirts to sequins, from church choir girl to tabloid fixture, from her teenage romance with Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams), the woman who would continue on as her creative director, to her volatile marriage to Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders), who slithers into the movie licking his lips like he’s hungry to eat her alive.

Those beats are here. But it’s the melodies that matter, those moments when Ackie opens her mouth to channel Houston’s previously recorded songs. We’ve heard Houston’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You” countless times, and Lemmons bets, correctly, that the beloved hit will still seize us by the heart during the rather forthright montage she pairs with it, images of Houston marrying Brown, birthing her daughter Bobbi Kristina and honoring Nelson Mandela underneath a sky filled with fireworks.

Ackie doesn’t much resemble the superstar, although her carriage is correct: eyes closed, head flung back, arms pushing away the air as if to make room for that mezzo-soprano. That the film sticks to Houston’s surfaces is half excusable. The screenwriter Anthony McCarten seems to find that the woman underneath the pop star shell was still struggling to define herself at the time of her death at the age of 48. We see her raised to be the mini-me of her mother, the singer Cissy Houston (Tamara Tunie), complete with matching haircut, and then handed over to a recording label to be transformed into America’s Princess, a crown she wore with hesitance, and, later, resentment. (Stanley Tucci plays her friendly, Fagin-with-a-combover Clive Davis of Arista Records, who also produced this film.) At Houston’s final “Oprah” performance, recreated here, she belts an earnest ballad called, “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.”

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‘Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ Review: A Lavish, All-Stops-Out Biopic That Channels Her Glory and Gets Her Story Right

Naomi Ackie captures Whitney Houston's incandescence in Kasi Lemmons' bracing biopic.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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She is more or less forced, by the music industry and by her manipulative business-manager father (played by the superb Clarke Peters), to hide her relationship with Robyn. She complies, though in a complex way, shunting Robyn to the side and sleeping with men, like Jermaine Jackson (Jaison Hunter), whom she’s attracted to, all of which feeds her without fulfilling her. She keeps Robyn hanging around, as her creative director and closest comrade, but Whitney also has a conflicted traditional side. She says she longs for a husband. Was Robyn Whitney Houston’s greatest love of all? The film answers that by dramatizing how the love that a homophobic society coerces Houston into repressing is at the heart of the traumas that come for her later. She denies who she is and keeps trying, and failing, to fill the void.

It doesn’t help that a segment of her audience turns on her for making pop music that’s “not Black enough.” Whitney herself, commiserating with Robyn, ruefully mocks the image she has to project in the “How Will I Know” video: flip, bouncy, and flirtatious, with a wig of taffy curls and the wholesome grin of what she derisively calls “America’s sweetheart.” That wasn’t her; her personality was grittier, wilder, tougher (she hated wearing dresses), and she felt alienated from the princess-next-door image she was selling.

The music, however, was another story. The movie shows us how Whitney meticulously chose among the songs Clive Davis found for her (he knew she couldn’t sell a song unless she believed in it), and how her taste was broader than traditional R&B because she’d grown up in a far more eclectic world. The songs reflected her spirit — and besides, it’s a form of elitism to believe that a pop song as luminous as “So Emotional” or “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” somehow lacks the “purity” of rock ‘n’ roll or R&B.

We see Whitney getting booed at the 1988 Soul Train Music Awards, and the film says it’s no coincidence that that’s the night she meets Bobby Brown, the sexy scurrilous lightweight she hitches herself to like a jalopy to hell. Ashton Sanders, who gave “Moonlight’s” greatest performance, plays Brown with just the right touch of slit-eyed saturnine opportunism. He and Whitney have a fatal attraction — she gives him respectability, he gives her street cred. And maybe she felt, too much, that she needed that. There’s a moment between them that’s so horrifying it’s funny: Bobby proposes to Whitney in the back of a car, and then, after he pops the bling on her finger, he drops some news he should have told her beforehand. This is who he is. So why did a star of Houston’s power and magnitude embrace this scroundrel as her romantic destiny?

The movie could have pushed the darkness a notch further, as Whitney spins down in a vicious cycle of splintered ego and self-destruction. “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is frank enough about her cocaine addiction, but her dissolute final days are staged rather demurely. Yet through it all, we feel the terrible way that she’s pulled in all directions — a tricky thing for a biopic to dramatize, and this one does it thrillingly well. Kasi Lemmons’ staging has an unfussy intimacy, and she pulls off a coup by ending the film with one of Whitney’s greatest performances, though one that’s not nearly as famous as her “Star-Spangled Banner” at the 1991 Super Bowl. It’s her live performance of the medley of “I Loves You, Porgy,” “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” and the supremely devotional “I Have Nothing” from the 1994 American Music Awards, which builds and builds until her voice shines like a heavenly beacon. It lights the audience up.    

Reviewed at Sony Screening Room, Nov. 30, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 146 MIN.

• Production: A Sony Pictures Releasing release of a TriStar Pictures, Compelling Pictures, Black Label Media, Muse of Fire, Primary Wave Entertainment production. Producers: Anthony McCarten, Pat Houston, Clive Davis, Larry Mestel, Denis O’Sullivan, Jeff Kalligheri, Matt Jackson, Molly Smith, Trent Luckinbill, Thad Luckinbill, Matthew Salloway, Christina Papagjika. Executive producers: Naomi Ackie, Janice Beard, Lexie Beard, Tanner Beard, Jane Bergére, Marina Cappi, Dennis Casali, Josh Crook, Matthew Gallagher, Erika Hampson, Stella Meghie, Rachel Smith, Seth Spector.
• Crew: Director: Kasi Lemmons. Screenplay: Anthony McCarten. Camera: Barry Ackroyd. Editor: Daysha Broadway. Music: Chanda Dancy, Whitney Houston.
• With: Naomi Ackie, Stanley Tucci, Nafessa Williams, Tamara Tunie, Clarke Peters. Ashton Sanders, Bria Danielle Singleton.

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Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody

A joyous, emotional, heartbreaking celebration of the life and music of Whitney Houston, one of the greatest female R&B pop vocalists of all time, tracking her journey from obscurity to musi... Read all A joyous, emotional, heartbreaking celebration of the life and music of Whitney Houston, one of the greatest female R&B pop vocalists of all time, tracking her journey from obscurity to musical super stardom. A joyous, emotional, heartbreaking celebration of the life and music of Whitney Houston, one of the greatest female R&B pop vocalists of all time, tracking her journey from obscurity to musical super stardom.

• Kasi Lemmons
• Anthony McCarten
• Naomi Ackie
• Stanley Tucci
• Ashton Sanders
• 216 User reviews
• 127 Critic reviews
• 51 Metascore
• 1 win & 7 nominations

Top cast 99+

• Whitney Houston

• Clive Davis

• Bobby Brown

• Cissy Houston

• Robyn Crawford

• John Houston

• Gary Houston

• Bobbi Kristina (8-11 Years Old)

• Bobbi Kristina (16-19 Years Old)

• Michael Houston

• Pat Houston

• Rickey Minor

• (as Kelvin Coffey)

• Gerry Griffith

• Policeman (ATL)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Whitney Houston 's voice is used for 95% of the singing.

Clive Davis : Would you be willing to postpone your wedding to make a movie?

[Hands over a script]

Whitney Houston : The Bodyguard ? What's it about ?

Clive Davis : A world-famous singer and her difficult relationship with her bodyguard.

Whitney Houston : [Tosses script into a trash bin, then pauses] Who's the bodyguard ?

Clive Davis : Kevin Costner.

[Whitney Houston quickly reaches down and retrieves the script]

• Connections Featured in The Graham Norton Show: Tom Hanks/Naomi Ackie/Suranne Jones/Richard Osman/Rina Sawayama (2022)
• Soundtracks I Believe in You and Me Written by Sandy Linzer & David Wolfert Performed by Whitney Houston Courtesy of Arista Records By arrangement with Sony Music Entertainment

User reviews 216

• tchelitchew
• Dec 28, 2022
• How long is Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody? Powered by Alexa
• December 23, 2022 (United States)
• United States
• Official site
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• Nữ Danh Ca Huyền Thoại
• Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Compelling Pictures
• Black Label Media
• Dimension Studio
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $45,000,000 (estimated)
• $23,708,080
• Dec 25, 2022
• $59,806,881

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• Runtime 2 hours 24 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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• <i>Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody</i> Captures Both the Tragedy and Glory of the Superstar

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody Captures Both the Tragedy and Glory of the Superstar

A s adored as she was in her lifetime, the real meaning of Whitney Houston didn’t click until she was gone. When she was alive, we knew about her extraordinary vocal range, and how electrifying a performer she was. We also knew she had substance-abuse problems, was struggling through a stormy marriage (to fellow pop star Bobby Brown), and, as the tabloids told us in trumpeting type, was gay or bisexual. For some reason, it was easy to be blasé about all of those things—weren’t the personal lives of all pop superstars a mess? Wasn’t that just the cost of being them? Weren’t they, on some level, just asking for trouble? Houston seemed to be playing off a rulebook that had been written long before she hit the scene. Her death in 201 2, after a drug-related drowning accident, was mournful but not particularly surprising.

Yet the more time passes, the sadder it seems that most of us didn’t pay closer attention to the person Houston really was, or was trying to be. The fractured framework of Houston’s life has been addressed in several documentaries (among them Kevin Macdonald’s Whitney and Nick Broomfield and Rudi Dolezal’s Whitney: Can I Be Me ) and several biopics or thinly veiled fictionalizations (including, most recently, Andrew Dosumnu’s earnest but inert Beauty ). But of the non-docs, at least, Kasi Lemmons ’ Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody— starring English actress Naomi Ackie—may come closest to capturing Houston’s exuberant contradictions, and the joy she both took and gave in performing. The movie isn’t a melodramatic tell-all, or a total downer. But it manages, even while being unapologetically entertaining, to feel like an honest reckoning with all the things we didn’t want to know about Houston at her fame’s height. It’s a film that takes our failings into consideration, rather than simply fixating on hers, a summation of all the things she tried to tell us and couldn’t.

The story begins in 1983 New Jersey, with Ackie as the teenage Whitney, the star of her church gospel choir. Her vocals are disciplined—her discerning mama, Cissy (Tamara Tunie), a gospel singer extraordinaire herself, stands listening nearby, a stern criticism already taking shape in her eyes. Even so, Whitney’s voice is fresh and full of light, like a heartfelt promise. A little later, we see her listening to a song through headphones in a park. A girl comes up to say hello—it’s an innocent pickup, the way people used to get things going in the days before dating apps. The girl, Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams), laughs when Whitney introduces herself decorously as Whitney Elizabeth Houston. But before long, she has fallen in love with both the voice and the woman. The two move in together, even as Cissy scowls disapprovingly.

Cissy also feels competitive with her daughter, though there’s generosity, too: at a local nightclub, where Whitney usually sings backup for her mother the almost-star, Cissy almost literally pushes her daughter into the spotlight when she sees major record exec Clive Davis (played, with affectionate perfection, by Stanley Tucci ) in the audience. Suddenly, there’s a record contract: Whitney’s father, the immediately untrustworthy John (Clarke Peters), gets in on the action, setting the stage for future looting of his daughter’s earnings. Young Whitney makes her TV debut on the Merv Griffin show—her singing is less a full-on display of what she can do and more of an embrace, as if she yearned to take the whole world in at once. And before you know it, she’s a superstar, commanding a stadium full of people in a Spandex catsuit and fantastic gold-embroidered toreador jacket. We’ve already seen that she’s at least two people in one: a forthright young woman who knows what she wants, and a woman who gives too much away, to the people around her and maybe even to her audience.

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All of this is standard biopic stuff. But along with screenwriter Anthony McCarten, Lemmons—who has made some terrific movies in her long career ( Eve’s Bayou , Talk to Me), if perhaps not as many movies as we might wish—weaves events together deftly, highlighting the significant ones and eliding stuff that doesn’t matter so much. She turns Whitney’s pursuit of Brown (played by Ashton Sanders) into a comedy bit. After being wowed by him at the Soul Train Awards, she realizes he’s sitting right in front of her and begins whacking his head with her minaudiere. He finally turns around, barely prepared for the dazzler who’s standing there, laughing at him. Robyn, at Whitney’s side, witnesses all of it. She and her former romantic partner have brokered a kind of platonic devotion, but they’re fooling neither themselves nor anyone else. Whitney’s life is like a pile of dynamite just waiting for a match.

Ackie’s performance is wonderful: as Whitney, there’s something girlishly vulnerable about her, but you can see this is also a woman who has had to put up rigid guardrails. She bristles with fury when she fields the criticism that part of her audience has deemed her “not Black enough.” In one of the movie’s most intense scenes, she rushes to the side of her hospitalized father where, even as he’s gasping for breath, he hisses through his teeth that she had better pay back the money he believes she owes him . (It’s $100 million, even though he’s already bled her dry.) The movie’s finest scenes—there are quite a few of them—are the ones set in Davis’s office, where he pops in one demo cassette after another. The two listen together, but he says nothing before she does. Instead, he scans her face, wanting to know only what she thinks. She hears one song—it happens to be “How Will I Know?” —and brightens immediately; he gently counters that he’s not sure it has a hook. “I’ll give it a hook!” she says, and history proves that she did.

Is that an idealized version of the relationship between a superstar producer and his superstar? Maybe. (Davis is one of the movie’s producers.) But music biopics need to be equal parts stardust and sawdust to work. Similarly, Lemmons addresses Houston’s drug use discreetly—the movie Whitney keeps her crack apparatus in a nice little case—and her lowest moments pass fleetingly, often indicated by excessively messy hair.

But then, we already know the worst parts of the story—how low do we really need to go? This also saves I Wanna Dance with Somebody from the typical third-act problem of most biopics: the endless depiction of the long, slow decline. Lemmons is more interested in the root of Houston’s tragedy than its expression, anyway. At one point, Whitney laments that it’s her job to “be everything to everyone.” The list of performers who have been broken by stardom is long, but Lemmons suggests that Whitney had more than her share of burdens. Her sexuality and how she chose to define it, or not, should have been the least of her problems, yet it was treated as everyone’s business. In the early 1990s, I once went to hear Gospel great Shirley Caesar. It was a remarkable show, inclusive in the purest sense, and rapturous enough to make even a lapsed Catholic want to come to Jesus. But somewhere near the end, Caesar injected the line “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” into her patter and the spell was broken. The radiant energy of the music, the vibe, had been an invocation to levitate—but not for everybody.

In I Wanna Dance with Somebody, during an episode of romantic turmoil between Whitney and Robyn—Whitney has just slept with Jermaine Jackson, and Robyn is livid—Whitney confesses that she wants a “real” family, with a husband and kids. The mores she grew up with have stuck hard. “We can go to hell for this kind of shit,” she tells Robyn, waving her arms at the apartment the two share, a place where a fluffy cat sleeps on their bed, where they have coffee together in the morning. The tragedy of Whitney Houston has so many tiers: it’s a classic story about show-biz exhaustion, about being bilked by people who should be working in your best interest, about turning to drugs when you need to unwind after a show or rev up before one. But most of all, it’s a tragedy about having too many people, and too many forces, clawing away at your soul. Whitney deserved better. Long may she levitate.

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Review: Superstar biopic ‘Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ is decidedly off-key

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When remembering the iconic life and career of Whitney Houston , there are many defining moments that instantly spring to mind: when she obliterated “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl in 1991, thereby rendering all other versions subpar, her soaring rendition of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” from “The Bodyguard,” or even her concert at Wembley Stadium in honor of Nelson Mandela. In the new biopic “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” those moments are acknowledged, albeit briefly. Instead, writer-producer Anthony McCarten has chosen to bookend this slog through Houston’s career and all-too-short life with … her performance at the 1994 American Music Awards?

Indeed, the 10-minute medley, which is re-created in full, was a virtuosic vocal performance of which only Houston was capable, but this deep cut seems an odd choice to open and close the film. It’s the kind of choice that makes one question everything in “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” a film that is not engrossing enough on its own to prevent one’s mind from wandering toward the nagging questions about who made these decisions and why.

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Director Kasi Lemmons is behind the camera, though McCarten , the writer of such award-winning biopics as “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “The Darkest Hour,” “The Theory of Everything” and “The Two Popes,” is the driving force, having purchased the rights to Houston’s life and written the screenplay on spec. Legendary music mogul Clive Davis is also a producer, as well as Pat Houston, Whitney’s sister-in-law, former manager and the executor of her estate. Davis is played by Stanley Tucci in the film as a warm father figure and confidant for Whitney, while Kris Sidberry has a small role as Pat.

British actress Naomi Ackie bravely takes on the impossible task that is portraying Houston. While Ackie transforms herself, and nails all the Whitney-style mannerisms and gestures, the fact of the matter is that Whitney Houston’s talent and beauty was otherworldly in a way that mere mortals simply cannot channel.

As the film, set to the beat of that steady music biopic rhythm, progresses from hit song to hit song, with careful selections from Whitney’s complicated life playing out in between, the whole thing starts to feel like a promotion of her back catalog. What McCarten chooses to reveal and conceal in Whitney’s story is telling, especially if you’ve seen any of the documentaries about her life; 2017’s “Whitney: Can I Be Me?” or 2018’s “Whitney.”

The sensitive details of Whitney’s life are approached with blunt instruments rather than incisiveness, and what’s left out seems indicative of who’s telling the story and why. Her romantic relationship with close friend Robyn (Nafessa Williams) is presented early and candidly, and the film implies her substance abuse issues are related to her repressed sexuality and the pressure to perform at the behest of her exploitative father John (Clarke Peters) and demanding, perfectionist mother Cissy (Tamara Tunie). Whitney’s drug use is presented as a solo endeavor, or as a part of her relationship with R&B bad boy Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders), while other members of her inner circle are let off the hook.

Lemmons is a talented and experienced filmmaker, but cinematically, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is inert, leaving one to ponder if she was hamstrung by producers, the script, or shooting during the pandemic. There is no sense of world-building or life beyond the edges of the frame. Lemmons and Ackie faithfully re-create some of Whitney’s memorable music videos, but it always feels like Ackie is wearing a Whitney Houston costume rather than inhabiting a fully realized human being.

As the film progresses toward Whitney’s tragic end, it starts to take on a distinctly ghoulish quality, especially a scene that imagines her frame of mind before her death. It’s a film that ultimately feels less like a celebration and more like further exploitation of the star, leaving us all with much more unsettling questions about Houston’s life and legacy. Sadly, the disappointing “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” doesn’t let Whitney rest in peace.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

Rated: PG-13, for strong drug content, some strong language, suggestive references and smoking Running time: 2 hours, 26 minutes Playing: Starts Dec. 23 in general release

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‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ Comes to Praise Whitney Houston, Not to Bury Her

• By David Fear

You don’t have to be fanatical about Whitney Houston to have a go-to Whitney moment — you just need to love the sound of a human voice soaring into the stratosphere. Early adopters would probably cite her 1983 appearance on The Merv Griffin Show, right after Clive Davis signed her to Arista (she sang “Home” from the play The Wiz ). Others go straight to the “How Will I Know?” music video , which helped break her on MTV and thus, the pop charts. Hardcore Houston-heads know that if you want the real best-in-show performance, you check out the medley she performed at the 1994 American Music Awards of “I Loves You Porgy,” “And I Am Telling You,” and “I Have Nothing,” a true-blue vocalist triathlon. And don’t get us started on her definitive rendition of the National Anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl ….

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Williams’ Crawford takes her place next to Peters’ fire-brimstone-and-hypocrisy patriarch, Tunie’s flinty but concerned mother, Sanders’ volatile yet unthreatening version of Brown (who gets the best non-Whitney line, justifying his cheating by saying, “It was the alcohol…and lots of it!”), and Tucci’s benevolent Papa Clive as supporting players in the sublimated Passion Play happening underneath the celebration. Clichés abound, from Eureka moments to ironic reprises of songs to foreshadowing galore — but hey, biopics gonna biopic. No one can say Houston doesn’t deserve a movie based on her story, though some might wish it rose above the usual template. It still gives you a slightly rushed retelling of a life with its lion’s share of ups and some subterranean downs, and succeeds in jogging our memory about the accomplishments over the aftermath. It ends on that 1994 American Music Awards showstopper, recreated in full. Even a facsimile of Houston’s high point is enough to drive home not what we lost, but what we gained by hearing that voice at all.

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‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ Review: A Basic Whitney Houston Biopic Sets Her Wikipedia Page to Song

David ehrlich.

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A music biopic so broad and hacky it makes “Jersey Boys” seem like “All that Jazz,” Kasi Lemmons ’ well-acted but laughably trite “ Whitney Houston : I Wanna Dance with Somebody ” is an anonymous portrait of a singular artist — a by-the-numbers “Behind the Music” episode that needs 146 minutes to say almost nothing about a once-in-a-lifetime voice. Not even “Bohemian Rhapsody” was so obviously written by the guy who wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody,” as Anthony McCarten ’s algorithmic script skips down the various sections of Houston’s Wikipedia page with all the flow of a scratched greatest hits CD.

Here’s young Whitney as a choir soloist at the New Jersey church where she discovers her love for music. There she is at Arista Records’ HQ listening to the demo track for her future hit single, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” (“It’s about wanting to dance with somebody,” she says approvingly). Once her career takes off, the rest of her life is reduced to a diminishingly unsophisticated series of reactions to whatever happened in the previous scene, which doesn’t express Houston’s struggle to be everything to everyone so much as it does this movie’s desperation to be anything to anyone.

Whitney’s militaristic father demands that she break up with her secret girlfriend Robyn and play straight for the public? Cut to: Whitney announcing that she had sex with Jermaine Jackson. Whitney can’t stand the criticism that she isn’t Black enough? Cut to: Her flirting with rising R&B star Bobby Brown at the Soul Train Awards. Whitney mollifies Robyn’s panic with a calm “it’s not like we’re getting married?” Cut to: A scene we’ve been so well-trained to predict that actually watching it seems redundant (although it serves as a valuable reminder not to marry anyone tacky enough to pop the question in the back of a stretch limo).

Oh, well, it’s not as if there’s much hope left for Lemmons’ biopic at that point. Even by the time Whitney is discovered by Clive Davis at a New Jersey nightclub (an all-time groaner of a “you know that new sound you’re looking for?” moment), “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” has already become such a self-parody of its own genre that I kept waiting for Houston to perform a duet with Dewey Cox. At least that would have provided an unexpected note in an estate-approved film that’s been fully authorized within an inch of its life.

And yet, the abject laziness of the film’s construction isn’t quite enough to diminish the spirited zeal of its cast. That naturally begins with rising star Naomi Ackie (“Lady Macbeth”), whose radiant lead performance so convincingly suffuses octaves of feeling into a script full of flat notes that you will likely often forget she was lip-syncing Houston’s songs. Demure one minute, domineering the next, and always possessed with a self-belief that she can’t quite extend to the people around her, Ackie’s take on Houston would’ve been a wonderful character if this movie were as interested in the singer as it is in her songs.

As it stands, Whitney’s character development slows to a crawl shortly once she turns 19 and becomes Clive Davis’ new favorite client (the menschy, business-minded Davis is played by a very Stanley Tucci Stanley Tucci). It’s only during her earlier days — which “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” races through in about 15 minutes flat — that we get a clearer sense of what she wants, where she’s coming from, and what she might be afraid of leaving behind. Whitney’s relationship with her mom Cissy (the ever-reliable Tamara Tunie) is one of the film’s greatest strengths, never more so than during the scenes when she dragoons her teenage daughter into making the most of her god-given talents.

Does Cissy, a lifelong backup singer who feels overshadowed by nieces Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick, put undue pressure on Whitney to succeed where she fell short? It’s possible. But Cissy’s outsized ambition never comes at the expense of her maternal tenderness, and Tunie’s carefully balanced performance speaks volumes about the source of Whitney’s strength, just as Clarke Peters’ incisive but unflattering take on the superstar’s hyper-patriarchal father speaks volumes about Whitney’s struggle to own that strength offstage.

Defanged as this film can feel, that it was made with full support of the singer’s brother and sister-in-law makes it all the more damning that her father comes off as such a womanizing money monster (it’s funny that Cissy doesn’t age a day across the script’s almost 40-year span, while John Houston devolves from virile DILF to the Crypt Keeper as if sin itself were ravaging his skin).

It’s also during those formative teenage years that Whitney befriends Robyn Crawford (a compelling Nafessa Williams, who ironically played Bobby Brown’s pregnant ex-girlfriend in the Angela Bassett-directed Lifetime movie “Whitney,” one of the previous Houston bio-projects that “profoundly disappointed the fans and the people closest to her,” according to a saucy line in the press notes for “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”). The two cross paths in a meet-cute that’s scripted and scripted with all the excitement of swiping a Metrocard, but Ackie and Williams embrace the ease of their characters’ mutual attraction.

Sadly relegated to the stuff of rumor until after Houston’s death, the singer’s relationship with Crawford is at least somewhat reclaimed here as — if not the greatest love of all — the rare circumstance in Houston’s life when love gave to her without taking. What Houston gave back to Crawford is less clear, as this movie is too busy jumping between the bullet points of Houston’s biography to bother exploring how she felt about her. Ostracized and neglected as Crawford may have been by Houston’s family, it’s hard to imagine that Houston herself was as cruelly indifferent to her ex-girlfriend and creative director as she appears here.

Overstuffed and underwritten, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” falls back on Whitney’s feeling of being spread thin between too many people at once as an excuse for making her a passenger in this warp-speed telling of her own life story. Things eventually move fast enough that scenes bleed into each other over the soundtrack, the beats of McCarten’s checklist-like script smudged by the constant undercurrents of crowd noise that carry the movie from one concert to the next.

The film’s cram-it-all-in approach makes it impossible for “Eve’s Bayou” director Lemmons to assert her usual control, or to anchor even the most tragic moments of Houston’s life with the gravity they deserve (the scene where she miscarries during the middle of a take while shooting “The Bodyguard” feels nearly as artificial as the CGI fighter jets that scream over her Super Bowl performance).

Grateful as fans might be that this glossy biopic doesn’t go full “Blonde,” the bit where Bobby turns violent would barely even register if not for the volatility of Ashton Sanders ’ clenched performance, while more time is spent on the covert manner by which Whitney acquired her drugs than on why she began using them in the first place. And while Whitney’s relationship with her daughter is too pure for even the most superficial of biopics to diminish its love and sadness, those feelings exist purely in the abstract, and don’t feel any more nuanced or personal than they would have without the previous two hours as a prelude.

“Every song is a story,” someone says, “if it’s not a story, it’s not a song.” Well, all-time chart-toppers like “When You Believe,” “Higher Love,” and “I Will Always Love You” are definitely songs, so where are the stories behind them? Watching “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” I couldn’t help but wonder if if McCarten-esque karaoke biopics — which unfold more like animated jukeboxes than full-bodied dramas — don’t fail at honoring their subjects so much as they succeed at letting audiences sing along to their lives.

Maybe people want to watch a movie for the first time and feel as if they can already mouth the words to every line, because the real subject of these music biopics aren’t the icons who inspired them, but rather the enjoyment that we continue to take from their work… and the streaming money that our rediscovered enthusiasm inspires from us in turn. We used to have greatest hits CDs, and now we have glorified cosplay. And yet the cosplay is obviously great here, and so are the hits.

“To sing with the gods,” one character says, “sometimes you need a ladder.” Or maybe you just need the rights.

Sony Pictures will release “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody” in theaters on Friday, December 23.

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I Wanna Dance with Somebody Skips Too Quickly Through the Tracks

When we already know its awful ending, why do we want to watch a movie like I Wanna Dance with Somebody ? (Which, technically, has had a last-minute retitling to Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody .) We’re all too aware of what’s going to befall Houston in a hotel room in 2012, so everything preceding it feels like a march toward ruin. That weight drags down director Kasi Lemmons ’s film; inevitably, perhaps. 

Things start well, as they so often do in path-to-stardom stories. We meet a young Houston, a gifted church singer whose family is already ensconced in the music industry. Houston is haloed in an aura of teeming potential; she’s bright and hungry and, in those early days, determinedly herself. Houston, played with equal parts flounce and flint by British actor Naomi Ackie , is not the pious daughter her parents, and later much of America, want her to be. She strikes up a relationship with Robyn Crawford ( Nafessa Williams ), seemingly secure in her sexuality and not terribly guarded about it. 

Here Anthony McCarten ’s script promises to be something different than the usual approved-by-the-estate biopic. There will be some transgression of the lore, a more personal and probing look into an icon’s life, unlike so many films that simply wander through the greatest hits. That energy is maintained as Houston is discovered by Clive Davis (played with avuncular purr by Stanley Tucci ) and her career begins its skyrocket ascent. Houston is assertive and self-possessed, clever about what songs appeal to her and defiant about Robyn’s close presence in her life. There is a real character study happening here, one that Ackie approaches with intriguing nuance. 

I Wanna Dance with Somebody benefits, of course, from Houston’s seismic songs, joyful pop blares and full-throated ballads that easily energize any scene in which they’re featured. We are mostly hearing Houston herself sing, but Ackie lip-syncs expressively. (So much so that I was sure it was her singing for much of the film; post-screening reading suggests otherwise though.) Not everyone was enamored of Houston’s music back then; there was criticism within the Black community that Houston was too nakedly being marketed to white audiences, stripping her songs of any detectable notes of gospel or R&B, a sonic whitewashing. Here is another complicated facet of Houston’s legacy, presented with a refreshing frankness. 

But the film introduces that issue only to quickly drop it. As it does with Houston’s sexuality. I Wanna Dance with Somebody ultimately devolves into a boilerplate biopic, a series of increasingly unfortunate events presented with little narrative shape or texture. The film whizzes through the years, skating blithely over The Bodyguard , never once mentioning Waiting to Exhale , and barely addressing Houston’s drug use until it’s become the problem that will destroy her.

I suppose the offhanded way that Lemmons incorporates Houston’s cocaine dependency into the story might be the point; this was an insidious thing that went from casual to serious largely in secret. Still, the film lacks some kind of origin story for this aspect of Houston’s life: when precisely did it begin, and how? That may not be what I Wanna Dance with Somebody wishes to focus on, but in that polite avoidance, the film thins itself into flimsiness. The searching quality of the film’s beginnings loses out to the later bland reenactments. 

Similarly, the film presents only the rudimentary basics of Houston’s volatile marriage to Bobby Brown ( Ashton Sanders ). By the time he enters the picture, things are moving at too quick a clip for his presence to gain any traction. He’s there only because one can’t make a Whitney Houston biopic without him. The film loses sight of Robyn, too. Maybe that is reflective of Houston’s mounting isolation, but the film has previously established an interesting and perhaps defining relationship that it then casts aside for expediency's sake. There is also the matter of Houston’s parents, played forcefully by Tamara Tunie and Clarke Peters , who loom large when they’re given a bit of screen time, but are ultimately jettisoned along with everything else.

At least there is the music to return to, again and again. There is the famous Super Bowl national anthem performance, the soaring belt of “I Will Always Love You,” the righteous groove of “It’s Not Right but It’s Okay.” I Wanna Dance with Somebody is a mighty testament to Houston’s catalog, the cathedral highs and sultry lows of her singular voice. Those songs, at least, are eternal. If a movie that simply presses play on the mix tape is what it takes to remind us of Houston’s special power, then that’s reason enough for the film to exist. But the story behind the songs probably deserves more, and better.

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Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody Reviews

Ever so tidy, tying up loose ends that many Houston fans and onlookers likely wondered about in her final years and beyond. The resolutions did not always feel genuine, however, and at times seemed quite rushed.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 10, 2024

It's miraculous that a movie penned by the screenwriter of Bohemian Rhapsody would be worth watching, but Kasi Lemmons continues to prove she is a highly versatile filmmaker/actor whose imprint on cinema will be felt for decades to come.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Mar 6, 2024

It wasn’t gay enough, but that it was gay at all gives me hope we’ll get this part of her story done right some day.

Full Review | Feb 13, 2024

I Wanna Dance with Somebody is a disservice to the memory of Whitney Houston. Make a playlist, watch videos, dance to her music. That’s a better way to remember her.

Full Review | Sep 6, 2023

“Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” has broad, nostalgic appeal – because who doesn’t want to take a break and listen to Whitney’s greatest hits for two-plus hours with period-perfect re-creations of music videos and performances?

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 16, 2023

You get the sense that someone handed screenwriter Anthony McCarten (“Bohemian Rhapsody”) a studio note that simply read, “Play the hits.”

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 9, 2023

This one is far from being the best biopic I’ve seen, despite the cast's committed performances. Glad they opted to use Houston's real voice, as it would be impossible to imitate THAT.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 8, 2023

Whitney Houston fans won't want to miss this combo pack revealing glimpses of the person behind the star. A must-have for any true fan.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 2, 2023

WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY is like the SparkNotes of [Houston's] life, a smattering of collected moments that feel hollow.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Feb 21, 2023

... It lacks the necessary intensity that the portrait of one of the most emblematic singers of the 90s, considered "The Voice" of an entire generation, deserved. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Feb 9, 2023

I Want to Dance With Somebody exposes its protagonist's descent, but never really asks what led to this unexpected and abrupt end... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 9, 2023

But, and in I Want to Dance With Somebody there is more than one 'but', everything or almost everything gets lost, it vanishes, blurs. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 9, 2023

Lemmons and screenwriter Anthony McCarten never get to the truth about Whitney, piecing together one scene after another after another... like writing a pop song with lyrics, melody and rhythm, but without a hook.

Full Review | Feb 8, 2023

... Covers the life and work of the late artist in autopilot, embracing each and every cliché of the genre. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 8, 2023

The story is good but the musical numbers are amazing.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Feb 3, 2023

As good as Ackie was, the final moments of the film for anyone who has seen the 1994 American Music Awards love medley only highlights the distance between her and Whitney...

Full Review | Jan 30, 2023

Content with staying in expected territory... makes for a rousing yet routine addition to the music biopic canon.

Full Review | Jan 26, 2023

There’s never a false note in Naomi Ackie’s performance...it feels effortless, avoiding any sense of imitation, she fully inhabits the role...Ackie really sells it, as she lip syncs for her life, capturing Whitney’s on-stage presence, passion, and spirit.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 16, 2023

It’s just completely mediocre and not worth your time.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Jan 13, 2023

I Wanna Dance with Somebody breaks my cardinal rule of biopics that I have mentioned time and time again. It tells too big of a story without getting specific about anything.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 11, 2023

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I Wanna Dance with Somebody review: The first authorised biopic turns Whitney Houston into a product

‘bohemian rhapsody’ screenwriter anthony mccarten strips a miraculous talent of her messy, beautiful humanity, article bookmarked.

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When Whitney Houston died in 2012, in a drug-related accidental drowning at age 48, the search for an explanation took on a desperate edge. Tell-all memoirs were published by her inner circle. Documentaries – 2017’s Whitney: Can I Be Me and 2018’s Whitney among them – functioned more like space probes. A Lifetime series directed by Houston’s Waiting to Exhale co-star, Angela Bassett , came across as earnest but slight. Most of these positioned Houston as an Icarus plummeting back down to Earth, with an outsized focus on her latter years of addiction, her fading vocal range, and her tabloid domination.

She’d become one of the many, cautionary tales that haunt pop culture’s margins, all at the expense of that miraculous talent that once earned her the nickname “The Voice”. So, it’s hard to fault Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody , the first biopic authorised by her estate, for its attempt to recentre her legacy. It’s “The Voice” – that soaring, velvet soprano – that we first hear, played over its opening titles. They’re also the last words we see on screen before the credits roll. But it’s a noble cause undercut by more cynical, capitalist impulses. The film is only one step in a vast, corporate overhaul that’s seen Houston’s estate partner with management company Primary Wave. There are now Houston-themed Funko POP! figurines, Peloton classes, and a line of MAC cosmetics.

I Wanna Dance with Somebody , then, is less about truth and artistry than it is about control – its intentions made clear by the hiring of Bohemian Rhapsody screenwriter Anthony McCarten, who maligned Freddie Mercury ’s status as a queer icon to paint the living members of Queen in a more positive light. His handling of Houston is more respectful, at least, but the formulaic cradle-to-grave structure of his script plays like a run-on sentence of biographical detail. The film cuts to her performance of the US national anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl when it’s already halfway done, only to then get distracted by the hideous, CGI fighter planes flying overhead. Her friendship with Bodyguard co-star Kevin Costner, who first suggested she sing “I Will Always Love You”, is nixed almost solely to avoid finding a Costner lookalike.

It’s a real waste of the talent at work here in front of and behind the camera. Walthamstow-born Naomi Ackie, best-known for her roles in The End of the F***ing World and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker , would ideally have been catapulted to fame by her role as Houston. Though her own singing voice is largely (and logically) replaced by Houston’s, she’s clearly doing the hard work of burrowing into the space between direct imitation and the evocation of something bigger, and more symbolic. She plays Houston as someone prepared to live in total service of her gift. But the film hardly lets her breathe. Director Kasi Lemmons and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd do their best to find that emotion in the camerawork, but the tenderness with which she’s framed never feels close to enough.

The film begins in 1983, in New Jersey, and her discovery by Arista Records founder Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci). Davis, who is a producer on the film, remains a serene, paternal presence throughout. Houston’s romantic relationship with her long-time creative director Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams) is depicted – as is the singer’s decision to end it because she feared the public’s scrutiny and, as the film implies, her family’s own homophobic beliefs. But we never heard much from Robyn beyond that point. Most troublingly, it whitewashes Houston’s allegations that Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders) was abusive during their marriage. Instead, we’re simply ushered on to the next event, the next line on her Wikipedia page. I Wanna Dance with Somebody strips Houston of her messy, beautiful humanity. All it offers instead is a product to market.

Dir: Kasi Lemmons. Starring: Naomi Ackie, Stanley Tucci, Nafessa Williams, Tamara Tunie, Ashton Sanders, Clarke Peters. 12A, 144 minutes.

‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ is in cinemas from Boxing Day

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Screen Rant

Whitney houston: i wanna dance with somebody review - great cast, standard biopic.

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Nearly 11 years ago, global sensation and renowned superstar Whitney E. Houston shocked the world with her untimely death. Because of her remarkable artistry, which later deemed her "The Voice," she’s had great influence on pop culture as it exists today. Given her celebrity, Houston’s life has been documented onscreen in a variety of projects. In 2018, Whitney , which premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, became the second of three documentaries on the star’s life. More recently, Lifetime premiered the biographical film, Whitney , which starred Yaya DaCosta as the titular character with Angela Bassett in the director’s chair. Now, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody sees a chronological telling of the late singer’s rise to fame in addition to the problems she faced in the process.

Whitney Houston was a vocal powerhouse and star from the moment she entered show business. Directed by Kasi Lemmons from a script written by Academy Award nominee Anthony McCarten, who also penned the script for Bohemian Rhapsody , the film portrays the complexities of the multifaceted woman behind major hits like her rendition of Dolly Parton’s "I Will Always Love You" and "I Have Nothing." From New Jersey choir girl to one of the best-selling and most awarded recording artists of all time, viewers can expect an inspirational and emotional journey of Whitney Houston’s trailblazing career, with great performance depictions and insight into the woman behind the voice. For a biopic, I Wanna Dance with Somebody follows the norms of the genre but allows Naomi Ackie, who stars as the late singer, to deliver a sensational performance in the process.

Related: Whitney Houston Movie Trailer Re-Creates Iconic Super Bowl Performance

With so many documentaries and films before this one, I Wanna Dance with Somebody doesn’t have much else to reveal about the beloved and iconic singer that was Whitney Houston. For all intents and purposes, Lemmons’ feature acts less like a history lesson (despite its storytelling model) and more like a celebration of all that Houston was, for better or worse. Sure, McCarten’s script crams in every possible major hit and occurrence into the film, but that enables Lemmons to let loose in reminding audiences why Houston was such a star.

That said, there are some missing pieces from which the film could have benefited. Early childhood years, for example, could have impacted the story further, giving audiences insight into how Houston developed such a powerhouse voice. In lieu of featuring these elements, I Wanna Dance with Somebody relies on viewers’ existing knowledge of the superstar, only briefly giving insights into what led to her troubles. On the other hand, the reliance on her voice and less on her problems and tragedies is what makes Lemmons’ latest a fun and easy watch. It gives the audience a sense of joy, which ultimately comes off as a celebration of life instead of rehashing the intricacies of Houston's personal struggles.

While the creative team behind I Wanna Dance with Somebody puts in very little effort to avoid being just another biopic, it is the cast that goes above and beyond to bring a picture to the big screen that is worth the watch. Naomi Ackie truly commits to delivering a performance that brings in equal amounts of laughs and tears. For viewers unfamiliar with her work, now is the time to get behind her remarkable talent. Black Lightning’s Nafessa Williams also delivers a wondrous performance as Houston’s long-time best friend Robyn Crawford. If there’s anything to take away from this story through their performances alone, it’s that everlasting friendship among women is a blessing.

In the end, Lemmons and McCarten’s chronological overview of Houston’s stardom is a fine biopic that doesn’t offer new insights — at least not to longtime fans of the singer. What it lacks in showcasing the woman behind the voice it makes up for in the depictions of some of Houston’s most recognized performances. I Wanna Dance with Somebody celebrates the star that captured the hearts of many fans around the world. And through a great performance by Ackie, this film has the ability to do the same, even if it sticks to genre rules.

More: Babylon Review: Robbie Is Alluring In Chazelle's Glitzy, Hollow Ode To Hollywood

I Wanna Dance with Somebody will release in theaters nationwide on December 23. The film is 146 minutes long and rated PG-13 for strong drug content, some strong language, suggestive references, and smoking.

I Wanna Dance With Somebody

I Wanna Dance With Somebody is a biographical musical drama directed by Kasi Lemmons. The film chronicles the life and career of iconic singer Whitney Houston, spotlighting her rise to fame and personal struggles. Naomi Ackie stars as Houston, with Stanley Tucci portraying record producer Clive Davis. Through concert performances and intimate moments, the film aims to capture the essence of Houston's legacy in the music industry.

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Director : Kasi Lemmons

Writers : Anthony McCarten

Stars : Naomi Ackie, Stanley Tucci, Ashton Sanders

Synopsis : A joyous, emotional, heartbreaking celebration of the life and music of Whitney Houston, one of the greatest female R&B pop vocalists of all time, tracking her journey from obscurity to musical superstardom.

It’s a miracle I was emotionally enticed by Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody.  I loathed Bohemian Rhapsody and despise biopics that give audiences a Cliffs Notes summary of the public figure’s lives. But there’s something different in how director Kasi Lemmons approaches Houston’s life and invites us into her imperfect movie on an imperfect artist who has always struggled in her personal life as much as she had The Voice. 

Hearing Whitney’s voice on the big screen felt amazingly cathartic, even if Naomi Ackie did not provide the vocals for the star. But it almost doesn’t matter because we’re quickly pulled into her life. Houston listens to Stevie Wonder’s “All I Do” on her Walkman and meets Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams). The two will share an intimate relationship before their parents (Tamara Tunie and Clarke Peters) strip it apart to preserve her image of “America’s Princess.” 

She becomes the “Princess” after singing “The Greatest Love of All,” in front of Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci), who immediately signs her and becomes her record producer. Robyn becomes her Creative Director as Houston’s father starts to control everything in her life, including her marriage to Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders). Her relationship with Brown exacerbated her drug addiction, which she had struggled with throughout her life, leading to her tragic death in February 2012. 

A lot is happening, and the film goes through events of her life at a breezy pace as if Lemmons is checking boxes from a list of Houston’s most significant events. And the film is edited in a rather odd structure, alternating between multiple events of Houston’s life, briefly showing one moment before cross-cutting to the other. But it all makes perfect sense. 

The biggest cross-cut happens at the very beginning, opening at the 1994 American Music Awards, where she is about to sing her medley, “I Loves You, Porgy/And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going/I Have Nothing” and cutting back to her humble beginning, meeting Robyn, singing “The Greatest Love of All” and becoming the success we know her to be. The film only comes back to the AMAs at the tail end, as she is about to take the bath that will ultimately end her life, reminiscing of the time she sang the medley after meeting a bartender (Elegance Bratton) who told her about the greatest performance he’s ever seen at the AMAs in 1994. 

We then get to see that performance, recreated by Ackie, and it’s far more potent than that Live Aid climax in Bohemian Rhapsody . For one, screenwriter Anthony McCarten doesn’t manipulate the audience like he did in Bohemian Rhapsody by having Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) announce he has AIDS before his actual diagnosis, so that they would bawl their eyes out once he would start “singing.” That performance speaks for itself, and ends the movie on the highest of notes, instead of doing a painstaking recreation of Houston’s death, which was my biggest fear. We didn’t need to see it, but we certainly needed to see Houston in her prime, singing her guts out and giving her all in front of millions of people, reminding us exactly why she was “The greatest Voice of her generation.”

And Lemmons loves Houston. You can tell from how Barry Ackroyd’s camera positions Ackie in the frame and paints her highest moments as a true historical triumph. Houston’s voice was triumphant and transcended barriers, as much as some people thought she was milquetoast or “not Black enough.” She proved all the naysayers wrong through her music and stunning stage presence, on tour, or when she sang the National Anthem at the Super Bowl XXV, giving the greatest Anthem performance in the history of the game. All of these moments of Houston’s life are purposefully fragmented, in the sense that we don’t get to bask in the event too much before moving onto the next part of her life. 

However, those fragments deftly edited by Daysha Broadway give its final scene the resonance it needs to make you ugly cry, even if you’ve never lived through Houston’s prime, or cared much about her music. It also helps that Ackie lives and breathes Houston from beginning to end, and doesn’t try to do a pale imitation of her mannerisms the way Rami Malek did in Bohemian Rhapsody . She has great chemistry with Williams who makes the most of her screentime, as does Tunie as Cissy. Though her relationship with her father is only briefly hinted at, I would’ve liked to see more of Peters, and that aspect of the film fleshed out further. As with any fragmented film, we only get a brief glimpse of instances of a person’s life, instead of the full picture. 

But it didn’t necessarily matter when the final scene hit, and everything that was shown before fed into Houston’s impeccable performance. All of the small flaws dissipate, and the film becomes more than a straightforward biopic showing events of Houston’s life, but now a celebration of who she was at her best made by a filmmaker who completely admires her strongest parts and understands her vulnerabilities. It’s miraculous that a movie penned by the screenwriter of Bohemian Rhapsody would be worth watching, but Kasi Lemmons continues to prove she is a highly versatile filmmaker/actor whose imprint on cinema will be felt for decades to come. 

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Whitney houston: i wanna dance with somebody.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 5 Reviews
• Kids Say 8 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Superstar's rise to fame has mature themes, drug use.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that I Wanna Dance with Somebody is a biopic about the life and career of Whitney Houston (Naomi Ackie), the talented singer who in the 1980s and 1990s had more hit singles than the Beatles. Most viewers will know going in that Houston died in 2012 at age 48. While her untimely death isn…

Why Age 14+?

Houston had acknowledged substance dependencies that contributed to her untimely

Strong language includes a use of "f---ing," plus "s--t," "damn," "hell," and "a

Some of Houston and Brown's fights get physical: He pins her against a wall and,

Kissing, sometimes followed by characters shown waking up in bed together. A tum

Houston gets visibly wealthier over the course of the movie, with private jets,

Any Positive Content?

Though Houston's life ultimately ended in a tragic and early death, she was a yo

Champions the value of surrounding yourself with trusted loved ones, but undercu

Characters are based on real, flawed people who make plenty of mistakes. Houston

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Houston had acknowledged substance dependencies that contributed to her untimely death. She's shown smoking cigarettes and marijuana and preparing to smoke crack: She gets a glass pipe out and lights a spoon, but viewers don't see her actually inhale. Many characters drink to excess, and the effect of both drink and drugs is evident in characters who are sloppy and incoherent. In a touching scene, Houston's attentive manager tells her that she should go to rehab, but Houston doesn't.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language includes a use of "f---ing," plus "s--t," "damn," "hell," and "ass."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Some of Houston and Brown's fights get physical: He pins her against a wall and, in a way that seems very threatening, tells her never to "disrespect" him; she responds by saying she's going to get a gun and "smoke" his "ass" (she doesn't).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Kissing, sometimes followed by characters shown waking up in bed together. A tumultuous marriage is part of this narrative.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Houston gets visibly wealthier over the course of the movie, with private jets, fancy hotel rooms, and a spacious and luxuriously appointed house shown.

Diverse Representations

Though Houston's life ultimately ended in a tragic and early death, she was a young Black woman who broke through to the highest stratosphere of the entertainment business, serving as a powerful symbol for women, especially Black women, all over the world. Many other Black actors appear, and the movie was directed by a Black woman, Kasi Lemmons. Includes Houston's relationship with her lifelong best friend, Robyn Crawford: The two women were a romantic couple until rumors spread about Houston's sexuality.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Messages

Champions the value of surrounding yourself with trusted loved ones, but undercuts this message by demonstrating how Houston's family exploited her. Makes clear how much drugs and alcohol affected Houston's life and career.

Positive Role Models

Characters are based on real, flawed people who make plenty of mistakes. Houston was very talented and worked hard, but she had many struggles, some caused or made worse by family members who worked for her, including her father, and some connected to her marriage with Bobby Brown. He's shown to be an unpredictable partner: sometimes loving, sometimes abusive.

Parents need to know that I Wanna Dance with Somebody is a biopic about the life and career of Whitney Houston ( Naomi Ackie ), the talented singer who in the 1980s and 1990s had more hit singles than the Beatles. Most viewers will know going in that Houston died in 2012 at age 48. While her untimely death isn't depicted on-screen, viewers do see plenty of other iffy content as the film presents episodes from her life. Houston smokes cigarettes and marijuana and drinks wine and liquor. She's also shown rolling up a dollar bill in preparation for snorting cocaine and lighting a spoon and wielding a glass pipe in preparation for smoking crack. Drugs played a part in her death, as well as in her tumultuous relationship with singer Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders). They fight frequently and use substances together; in one scene, Brown threatens Houston physically, and she says she's going to get a gun and shoot him dead. Sexual content includes passionate kissing (including between Houston her lifelong best friend, Robyn Crawford, whom she was in a relationship with until rumors spread about Houston's sexuality), implied sex, and heated discussion of infidelity. Strong language includes "f---ing," "s--t," "damn," "hell," and "ass." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (5)
• Kids say (8)

Based on 5 parent reviews

It might not live up to the hypness, but it does deliver a strong performance!

What's the story.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Whitney Houston ( Naomi Ackie ) was a groundbreaking musical superstar. WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY (named in honor of her most enduring hit) traces her life from teenage gospel soloist to background singer to pop icon ... and eventually to tabloid mainstay thanks to her substance abuse and contentious relationship with R&B star Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders). Tamara Tunie co-stars as Houston's mom, soul singer Cissy Houston, and Stanley Tucci plays Houston's longtime producer Clive Davis.

Is It Any Good?

Most viewers will know exactly where this biopic is headed, but it avoids becoming a complete downer by concentrating largely on Houston's successes rather than her flaws. As Houston, Ackie is vibrant and sympathetic. She's larger than life, just as Houston was herself, and inhabits the movie's many full-length performance scenes with spine-tingling star oomph. Fans familiar with Houston's onstage high points -- including the 1994 American Music Awards medley that many call her greatest TV turn and her extraordinary 1991 rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at Super Bowl 25 -- will likely break out in goosebumps watching Ackie powerfully reenacting those moments (although, no, she's not singing herself, except for a few moments when she sings between snatches of dialogue, though she does an excellent lip synch to Houston's vocals).

But in between high-point performances, things sag a bit. The movie rushes through many parts of Houston's story, a typical problem with films that try to condense decades' worth of life into a two-hour running time. And the movie doesn't seem to have a good idea of why Houston transitioned from being America's sweetheart to becoming a tabloid staple. Problems arise (Daddy steals Whitney's money, Brown cheats) and are just as quickly dismissed. Thankfully, I Wanna Dance with Somebody is refreshingly clear on the nature of Houston's relationship with her lifelong best friend, Robyn Crawford (they were a romantic couple until rumors spread about Houston's sexuality), and doesn't dwell on Houston's hit-bottom points: There's no mention of Brown and Houston's infamous reality show, for instance. Ultimately, though, you're left with the impression that you didn't learn much more about Houston than you knew going in, and that's a bitter pill to swallow considering the film's expansive 2-hour, 26-minute running time. But when Ackie takes the stage as Houston, this drama soars, and for fans, that may be enough.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the mix of fame, fortune, and drug problems that the music industry seems to serve up so frequently. According to Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody , do you think Houston's success influenced her substance abuse ?

Talk about TV and movie biopics. How true does a story have to be to a person's real life to be considered biographical? Is it appropriate to take creative license with someone's life story? What if it makes for better entertainment?

Have you ever learned something you didn't know about your favorite celebrity or media role model that was surprisingly negative? Did that change the way you felt about that person?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 23, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : February 7, 2023
• Cast : Naomi Ackie , Stanley Tucci , Tamara Tunie
• Director : Kasi Lemmons
• Inclusion Information : Female directors, Black directors, Female actors, Black actors
• Studio : TriStar Pictures
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Music and Sing-Along
• Run time : 142 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : strong drug content, some strong language, suggestive references and smoking
• Last updated : August 8, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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• DVD & Streaming

I Wanna Dance With Somebody

• Biography/History , Drama , Music

Content Caution

In Theaters

• December 23, 2022
• Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston; Stanley Tucci as Clive Davis; Ashton Sanders as Bobby Brown; Tamara Tunie as Cissy Houston; Clarke Peters as John Houston; Nafessa Williams as Robyn Crawford; Bria Danielle Singleton as Bobbi Kristina; Daniel Washington as Gary Houston; Kris Sidberry as Pat Houston

Home Release Date

• February 7, 2023
• Kasi Lemmons

Distributor

• TriStar Pictures

Positive Elements   |   Spiritual Elements   |   Sexual & Romantic Content   |   Violent Content   |   Crude or Profane Language   |   Drug & Alcohol Content   |   Other Noteworthy Elements   | Conclusion

Movie Review

Cissy Houston knew that her daughter, Whitney, had an amazing voice—even if she got a bit caught up in it while singing for the church choir.

“God gives you a gift, you’ve gotta use it right,” Cissy insists.

Cissy gives the advice in earnest: She knows how far Whitney’s voice could take her. And when record producer Clive Davis arrives at a New York nightclub to listen to Cissy and Whitney perform, Cissy fakes a cough and sore throat to get Whitney—who typically sings backup vocals—to front of stage. Just like that, Whitney’s life changes forever.

“I might have just heard the greatest voice of her generation,” Davis says.

Now, the producer’s job is to find all the “great, big songs” that Whitney wants to sing—songs that’ll blow the nation away with Whitney’s talent. But it’s a tough gig, always being under pressure and in the limelight. If you’re going to be “America’s princess,” you’ve gotta look and act the part. And that’s tougher than it looks.

Positive Elements

Whitney’s mother, Cissy, supports Whitney through her career. Though Whitney sings backup vocals for her mother, Cissy fakes a cough in order to get Whitney to sing lead in front of Davis. Later, when Cissy hears that a song’s tempo is sluggish, she conducts the band herself in order to help get Whitney the best sound possible.

Throughout the film, Whitney’s parents tell her that she’s America’s princess. As it turns out, the term of endearment and the subsequent fame have caused Whitney to want a simpler life—one where she can raise her daughter and be happy. It’s decades later when Whitney directly voices these concerns to her mother before a show.

“You’re my princess,” Cissy says, attempting to support her daughter before she goes on stage.

“I think I’m just gonna be me,” Whitney responds.

Clive says he doesn’t get involved in the personal affairs of his clients. But when he sees how Whitney is destroying herself through drug use, he has an intervention with her, trying to get her to go to rehab. Whitney’s creative director, Robyn Crawford, makes a similar attempt, too.

When critics confront Whitney for making music that appeals to all demographics, she responds that “music has no boundaries.”

Spiritual Elements

Whitney sings “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” in a church choir, but her particular inflection of the notes garners Cissy’s disdain. “God gives you a gift, you’ve gotta use it right,” Cissy says. Whitney prays for God to give her strength at one point, and a couple of songs reference various religious terms (such as prayer). Whitney sings “Jesus Loves Me” as well.

Davis, who’s Jewish, tells Whitney that he won’t be her therapist or rabbi. Later, Whitney quotes Matthew 5:16 to him, and the producer responds with his own advice, calling it the “gospel of Clive.”

“Clive, you’re Jewish,” Whitney responds. “So was Jesus—at least on His mother’s side,” Clive quips.

Whitney’s father, John, quotes Scripture passages such as 1 Corinthians 15:33: “Bad company corrupts good character.”

Whitney says “to sing with the gods, you need a ladder” to justify her drug use (more on that later).

Sexual & Romantic Content

Following Whitney’s death, both her ex-husband, Bobby Brown, and Robyn Crawford say that Houston was bisexual. And the film shows us that Whitney and Robyn had an intimate relationship before she was signed. We see the two women kiss, and they live together for a time.

When Whitney brings the relationship up to her father, he tells them that they need to be seen in public “on dates with young men.” Due in part to her parents’ urgings, Whitney breaks things off with Robyn. Whitney also talks about how the Bible says homosexuality is a sin and tells Robyn that they could go to hell if they continue in it. Whitney soon breaks the relationship off, though the attraction between the two women remains evident for the rest of the film.

While talking about the song “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me),” Whitney says she likes the song because it’s about wanting to dance with someone, “but, for whatever reason, you just can’t.” The context of the scene subtly alludes to her attraction to Robyn.

When Whitney first meets Bobby Brown, she asks him how old he is, prompting him to respond, “Old enough.” Whitney eventually starts dating Bobby, and the two passionately kiss a couple times. During Bobby’s proposal, he mentions that he got his ex-girlfriend pregnant. We hear rumors about Bobby’s affairs with other women. And we learn that Whitney had sex with Jermaine Jackson. Whitney’s father has an affair, too.

We eventually discover that Clive is also bisexual, and we see Whitney and Davis look out the window at his partner.

Dancers wear tight outfits, and a couple of characters wear clothing that exposes cleavage. At one point, Whitney is seen in a bathtub, though nothing is shown. We see Whitney and others in swimsuits.

Violent Content

When Whitney breaks things off with Robyn, Robyn smashes stuff in her house. Whitney attempts to kick Bobby out of her home by threatening to get a gun and shoot him, prompting Bobby to forcefully grab and pin Whitney against a wall.

While Whitney films a scene for The Bodyguard , she stumbles. And in the next scene, we are told she had a miscarriage.

Crude or Profane Language

The f-word is used once, and the s-word is used at least 20 times. We also hear about 10 uses of “a–” and “d–n,” respectively. “H—” and “ho” are also used a few times each, and “b–ch” is used once. God’s name is used in vain 15 times or so, and at least four of those are in the form of “g-dd–n.” Someone uses a crude hand gesture.

Drug & Alcohol Content

The film dives deeply into Houston’s troubling history with drug use. Early in the movie, we see Whitney smoke a marijuana joint and inhale from a bong. Her initial drug use escalates to heavier drugs which noticeably change Whitney’s appearance and cause people close to her to push her towards rehab. As her drug problem grows worse, Whitney begins canceling concerts, prompting pursuing press to ask if she’s “high right now?”

Rumors in the press speculate further about Bobby and Whitney’s drug use. We watch as she obtains drugs from a drug dealer on a couple occasions. And when Whitney doesn’t show up for her father’s funeral, concerned family members find her instead high on drugs at her house scrawling messages on the walls; that incident results in her arrest and forced rehab. At the end of the film, text tells us that Whitney died in a “drug-related accidental drowning.”

Various characters drink a variety of alcoholic beverages. Others smoke cigarettes or cigars.

Other Noteworthy Elements

Bobby is arrested for breaking parole. Black critics of Whitney say that she’s “not a real Black artist” because her music isn’t “Black enough”; they call her racially charged names such as “Whitey” and “Oreo” (which, the slur alludes to, accuses someone of being Black on the outside but white on the inside). Whitney’s father, greedy for money, threatens to sue his own daughter.

The tragedy of celebrity status is a tale as old as time. If I told a story about a celebrity who rose to prominence, had a tumultuous and scandalous marriage, got addicted to hardcore drugs and died a sudden, tragic death, you’d all likely have a different name come to mind. And those famous folks would likely span various occupations, from actors, artists and musicians to authors, athletes and influencers.

Fame brings all the world has to offer and enjoy, but it also often destroys lives. And in the Whitney Houston drama I Wanna Dance With Somebody , we get a taste of both.

The film feels like a hodgepodge of Houston’s greatest hits smashed between the many excesses that often come with celebrity status. And surprisingly, despite the film’s two-and-a half-hour runtime, it still feels like we’re rushing from one moment of Houston’s life to the next without spending enough time developing anything of substance along the way.

Though Naomi Ackie does a magnificent job portraying Houston, the many songs (where Houston’s actual vocals are used) we hear are where the film shines. And were this movie a simple tribute to Houston’s greatest hits, that may have been all that needed to be said about it. But there’s much more in this biopic.

The film dives into Houston’s romantic relationship with her friend and creative director Robyn Crawford, who in real life said that the two had been “intimate on all levels.” While we see little more than kissing, the plot point remains. We also catch a glimpse into Houston’s volatile relationship with Bobby Brown as well as her addiction to drugs. And heavy language pervades the film, too, though its producers have managed to keep it within the bounds of the PG-13 rating standards.

The film also makes it clear that Whitney considers the fame more trouble than it’s worth. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore. Be everything to everyone,” she tells Bobby. But the singer is already too deep into a very successful career at that point, and a life of peace and quiet seems far out of reach of someone with so many responsibilities on her shoulders. That confession prompts Bobby’s callous response: “Well, you can’t stop now, right?”

Though moments of poignant joy and kindness certainly grace this film, I Wanna Dance With Somebody remains an all-too-familiar cautionary tale about how fame can destroy someone’s life.

Kennedy Unthank

Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”

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Whitney Houston Deserves So Much Better Than ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’

The film’s recreations of Houston’s greatest performance are stunningly accurate. You can also just go watch Houston do them herself on YouTube.

Kevin Fallon

Senior Editor, Obsessed

Emily Aragones/Sony Pictures

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by editor Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.

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 been a terrible one about 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.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ on Netflix, a Flatline Biopic of a GOAT Who Deserves Better

Where to stream:.

• I Wanna Dance with Somebody
• whitney houston

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This week on This Week in Biopics is Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (now on Netflix, in addition to VOD streaming platforms like Amazon Prime Video ), which casts Naomie Ackie as the wildly talented, popular and tragic pop singer. It has the potential to be a star-making role for Ackie, who we saw in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker , and will see next in Mickey 17 , Bong Joon-ho’s hotly anticipated follow-up to Parasite . But it also might be a thankless role, considering the following: One, the ubiquitousness of the subject. Two, the tragic arc of the singer’s life, which deserves more than a rote Behind the Music treatment. And three, the state of the biopic, especially the music biopic, in 2023; it’s pretty much dead these days, at least creatively. Harriet and Eve’s Bayou director Kasi Lemmons tries to get her arms around Whitney here, but it’s a frankly difficult task.

WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open in 1994. Whitney warms up her voice for a performance at the American Music Awards. But this isn’t really where we open – we soon jump all the way back to 1983, destroying any hope that the movie might be brave enough not to try encompassing 30 years in a person’s life in just under two-and-a-half hours. Whitney’s about 20 years old, letting rip, leading the church choir. Afterward, her mother Cissy (Tamara Tunie) cracks the whip: Enunciate! Know the melody inside and out! Cissy knows what she’s doing – she’s had a long career as a singer, and currently employs Whitney as a backup vocalist for club gigs. One night, Cissy spots superstar record exec Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci) in the crowd, forces Whitney to fly solo on ‘The Greatest Love of All,’ and history is made.

As Clive takes Whitney under her wing, her romance with Robyn (Nafessa Williams) is strained – to hear Whitney’s dad John (Clarke Peters) say it, you can’t be America’s Pop Star Sweetheart and be seen relationshipping around with another girl. She and Robyn duke it out a bit but decide to just be friends, with Robyn working as her personal assistant, and it works. Clive pops songwriter-demo cassettes – click, whirr, ch-chunk – and Whitney picks the “great big songs.” Then Whitney sings on Merv Griffin. Whitney sings in the studio. Whitney shoots a music video. Whitney hears her song on the radio and flips the eff out. Whitney sings in front of packed arenas. Whitney gets a bottle of Dom Perignon from Clive for every no. 1 hit, and she lines up seven of them. Whitney moves into a gigantic mansion. Whitney’s dad takes control of managing the business, which smells like a bad idea. Whitney is only 23. 

It continues, but this stuff isn’t always so rosy. Whitney claps back at a radio DJ who accuses her of “not being black enough.” Whitney argues with her father. Whitney tells Clive, “I wanna do a movie.” Whitney does cocaine. Whitney meets Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders). Whitney sings the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. Whitney shoots The Bodyguard . Whitney sings in South Africa to honor Nelson Mandela. Whitney and Bobby get married even though he’s nothin’ but trouble. Whitney has a baby, I think – I glanced down for a sec, and all this stuff was just coming so fast. OK, I double checked: Whitney has a baby. Whitney gets less and less happy as the years go by. Whitney smokes crack. Whitney fights with Bobby. Whitney looks at the books, and her dad has been blowing money like crazy. Whitney has some rough live gigs. Whitney talks with Clive, who’s kind of her confidant. It continues like this, until it doesn’t. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: On the music-biopic scale, I Wanna Dance isn’t as nutty as Elvis , as cruddy as Bohemian Rhapsody , or as rousing as Ray . It’s about on par with middling Aretha Franklin bio Respect or The United States vs. Billie Holiday .

Performance Worth Watching: Unlike Austin Butler in Elvis or Jennifer Hudson in Respect , Ackie doesn’t actually sing here, but lip-syncs the heck out of ‘I Will Always Love You’ and ‘Greatest Love of All’ and all the other hits – which isn’t a knock on her, since nobody before or since Whitney did or ever will sing like Whitney. Ackie shows considerable actorly acumen, although she’s hampered by a screenplay that tries to do way too much. 

Memorable Dialogue: Whitney gets righteous and confident:

Whitney: That’s what they want – America’s sweetheart.

Robyn: And you’re gonna give it to ’em?

Whitney: Just watch me.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Dramatized Wikipedia. I Wanna Dance with Somebody covers most every major Whitney life moment – and there are a lot of them – diligently. Some will praise Whitney’s estate for greenlighting an authorized biopic that dares to include her drug use, ugly moments from her marriage to Bobby Brown and sort-of-secret same-sex relationship. Those are facts from her life, and shouldn’t be ignored or glossed over. But Lemmons and screenwriter Anthony McCarten (who penned the similarly unimpressive Bohemian Rhapsody ) never get to the truth about Whitney, piecing together one scene after another after another, as if following a timeline instead of an emotionally engaging dramatic arc. It’s like writing a pop song with lyrics, melody and rhythm, but without a hook. 

This isn’t to say the film is unwatchable. It’s perfectly watchable, but disappointingly in line with ancient music-bio formulae: Elated highs, histrionic lows, montages and, of course, musical performances, which feel perfunctory when they should be electrifying. The dialogue is an awkward blend of exposition and sloganeering: “Every song is a story. If it’s not a story, it’s not a song,” “Remember: Head, heart, gut,” “I just wanna sing.” The depiction of Clive Davis – a credited producer – borders on saintly, and the rest of the supporting characters are rendered too thin to be memorable, even bad boy Bobby Brown. The tempo is choppy, the narrative full of abrupt transitions lacking the connective tissue to properly orient us in terms of setting or the emotional state of our protagonist – one moment she’s confident, and the next, she’s lugubrious.  

So the film follows Whitney’s slide from the top of the world into a depressive state. But why? Drug addiction? Public scrutiny? The high-pressure music business? Her failed marriage? Mental illness? Again, these are all things that happen, but the film is so busy covering all the bases like a historical documentary, it fails to truly address the substance of her character. There’s no arguing that Whitney was an all-timer, a generational talent (an assertion reiterated so frequently in the dialogue, it becomes grating). She’s one of the GOATs – and she surely deserves more than just a baseline-watchable biopic. 

Our Call: I Wanna Dance with Somebody is dutiful at best, but it never pops. SKIP IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

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‘i wanna dance with somebody’ review: whitney houston biopic is a travesty.

I wanna feel the HEAT … but I don’t.   

On the contrary, the animatronic new Whitney Houston biopic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” left me shivering from a gust of arctic air as it so clinically and lazily examines the tragic life of the famous singer.

I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY

Running time: 146 minutes. Rated PG-13. In theaters Dec. 23.

The incomparable Houston, who died in 2012 at the Beverly Hilton hotel of an accidental drowning caused by drug use , deserves a real cinematic movie — not this cheap filler you would have found on basic cable in 1998.

Naomi Ackie plays Houston starting from her early days in 1980s New Jersey as the promising teen daughter of Cissy Houston (Tamara Tunie), who is fatefully discovered by mega-producer Clive Davis (who is also, as it happens, a producer of this film) and soon becomes an international superstar with seven straight No. 1 hits — one more than The Beatles. In the end, we watch as she succumbs to hard drugs in order to shield herself from the pressures of fame and family. She died at just 48 years old.

Oddly, Davis (Stanley Tucci) is a much bigger character than Houston’s volatile husband Bobby Brown (the usually excellent Ashton Sanders in a static part) and mom Cissy. Audiences won’t show up expecting a Whitney/Clive two-hander, but that’s basically what they get. 

The film also wades into later revelations that Houston was secretly bisexual . Early on as a rebel who refuses to wear dresses, she makes out with her best friend Robyn Crawford, played dweebishly by Nafessa Williams. The pair move in together, though the movie steers clear of the bedroom.

As their relationship intensifies and Whitney wants to employ Robyn, she’s told by her father and manager John — portrayed with the subtlety of the alien from “Alien” by Clarke Peters — “You want my blessing? Go out on dates — with young men.”

Although offended, Whitney does as she’s instructed, which leads to an unintentionally hilarious scene in which Robyn shouts, “You slept with Jermaine Jackson?!?” and then smashes plates like a dry-run of a Greek wedding.

Even though her sexuality is depicted, kinda, the movie drops the issue quickly, either because the filmmakers didn’t know how to handle it from there or the estate preferred to keep things approachably vague.

Same goes for Houston’s drug use. The movie never makes it clear when she first started using cocaine or at what point it became a problem. Who initially gave it to her? You won’t find out here. Out of nowhere, she’s suddenly a shaky and erratic addict.

Maybe the filmmakers figured the audience wouldn’t want to confront any of those tough topics for too long. So instead, they go gangbusters on the songs.

Several numbers are, in a dumb move, re-created from start to finish. Every second of “Greatest Love of All,” along with her renditions of “Home” on “The Merv Griffin Show,” “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength” on Oprah and her medley of “Porgy and Bess” and “Dreamgirls” at the 1994 American Music Awards, make the cut. That’s about 20 minutes of screen time for those four tunes alone. Plus, we experience bits of the title track, “I Will Always Love You,” her performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl and more.

This movie feels endless.

Many of the musical sequences drag, unfortunately. The vocals are all actually Houston’s, but we never fully believe they’re coming out of Ackie’s mouth, as we did with Austin Butler in “Elvis” this summer, or during the electric “Bohemian Rhapsody” Live Aid scene with Rami Malek. The actress, who doesn’t look much like Houston to begin with, lacks her energy and star power. 

Outside the disappointing musical moments, Ackie gives an acceptable turn … for a character other than Whitney Houston. That divine moment of transubstantiation, in which a performer appears to transform into a beloved icon before our eyes, never happens. It’s little more than a halfway decent impression.

Still, she can only do so much considering Kasi Lemmons’ soft-focus direction (during the songs, all she does is hypnotically pan the camera in semi-circles in front of the stage over and over) and Anthony McCarten’s screenplay that was ghost-written by Siri. 

There’s certainly no art to McCarten’s script, which plays like an abrupt PowerPoint presentation of major events and hit singles coupled with dialogue that makes you dry heave. McCarten, who also wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody,” is everywhere lately. On Broadway, he’s got “A Beautiful Noise,” a musical about Neil Diamond , and the new play “The Collaboration,” about Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He’s the Domino’s Pizza of this lifeless schlock and he guarantees delivery within 30 minutes.

Someday there will be a movie that lives up Houston’s enormous talent, drive and complicated, troubled life. “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is not that movie.

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