‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ review: A flawed but fitting tribute to a complicated icon

NME

The posters for this biopic proudly announce that “Naomie Ackie is Whitney Houston“. That’s quite a claim, but Ackie’s performance as the late superstar is genuinely transformative. She doesn’t just nail Houston’s distinctive speaking voice and stage mannerisms – the lip quivers, the dramatic hand gestures – but also captures her plucky spirit. Houston’s friends and family members didn’t call her “Nippy” for nothing.

British actrss Ackie, known for her BAFTA-winning turn in The End of the F***ing World, invests Houston with tremendous empathy throughout. Still, the most moving scenes come at the end when Houston is grappling with her heartbreakingly diminished vocal ability. When everyone knows you as the “The Voice”, who do you become when it’s gone?

Ackie shows off her own vocal range in an early scene, but for the remainder of the movie we see her lip-syncing to Houston’s awesome live and on-record performances. It’s a sensible creative decision summed up in a recent interview by herco-star Stanley Tucci: “The only person who can sing like Whitney Houston was Whitney Houston, let’s face it.”

Ultimately, reminding us of this fact is the whole point of the film. A decade after her death from accidental drowning due to the effects of cocaine and heart disease, Houston the person remains an enigma – one I Wanna Dance with Somebody never really gets to the bottom of. The screenplay by Anthony McCarten, who also wrote the mega-successful Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, probably suffers from taking on too much. Director Kasi Lemmons (Harriet, Eve’s Bayou) keeps the pace brisk but her film still has a bloated 148-minute runtime.

We meet Houston as a teenager having proper vocal technique hammered into her by mother Cissy (Tamara Tunie) – a Grammy-winning singer in her own right – and follow her to her desperately sad death just before the 2012 Grammy Awards. That’s an enormously eventful period of around 30 years in which Houston signs a deal with legendary record executive Clive Davis (Tucci), gets marketed somewhat misleadingly as “America’s sweetheart”, scores more consecutive number-one hits than The Beatles, then faces accusations from some Black music fans of pandering too much white audiences.

Deep breath… we also see her marry the unreliable R&B singer Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders) and become a mother, deliver a transcendent a cappella rendition of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at the 1991 Super Bowl, star in The Bodyguard and turn Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ into an era-defining vocal masterclass, cut the defiant-late ’90s R&B classic ‘It’s Not Right But It’s Okay’, then descend into drug abuse before mounting a shaky comeback.

Unlike Bohemian Rhapsody, Lemmons’ film doesn’t try to downplay Houston’s queerness. Early on, there’s a poignant insight into her romantic relationship with Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams) and the way it’s perceived as a problem by John Houston (Clarke Peters_, the singer’s domineering and probably homophobic father. Crawford remained on board as Houston’s best friend and creative director long after their romance ended, but eventually she gets pushed out by Brown, whose own influence on Houston is much less nourishing.

I Wanna Dance with Somebody seems less interested in other aspects of Houston’s identity. When she tells Davis she is exhausted the way “all Black women are exhausted”, the film doesn’t bother delving into why. It also leaves other key questions hanging in mid-air. Why wasn’t Houston more interested in writing her own songs? What was her persistent smoking habit all about? After all, she had access to harder drugs – ones that wouldn’t have damaged her voice as ruinously. And was her professional relationship with Clive Davis always as benevolent as it’s portrayed? The fact Davis is credited as a producer on the movie may offer a clue.

Somewhat inevitably, the film ends with a flawless and thrilling recreation of one of Houston’s most iconic live performances. The narrative device that gets us there is rather contrived – Houston is reminded of the night in question by a sympathetic barman – but it delivers an affecting emotional payoff anyway. I Wanna Dance with Somebody isn’t as illuminating as it could be, but it still feels like a fitting tribute to a brave, tenacious and complicated artist who had a genuinely incredible gift.

The post ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ review: A flawed but fitting tribute to a complicated icon appeared first on NME.