Review: Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody

Image courtesy of TriStar Pictures.

There are some promising moments in the first half of director Kasi Lemmons' overly long biopic "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody." So many movies of this type tell us very little that we do not already know. Perhaps, I was living under a rock, but I had no idea that the pop singer (portrayed here by Naomi Ackie) had a relationship with a woman named Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams) early in her career. Therefore, the early scenes tracing the relationship between these two women was compelling.

Then, there's a scene fairly early in the movie when Houston's no-nonsense mother, Cissy (Tamara Tunie) - a singer whose career never quite took off - pulls a fast one that results in her daughter being forced to sing the lead vocals on "The Greatest Love of All" at a nightclub where famed record executive Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci) happens to be in attendance.

Davis is promised that Houston's voice will impress him - and, sure enough, when she hits those high notes on the song that would become one of her many hits, he has to shake his head in acknowledgement: Yes, this woman has an incredible voice and is a great talent. It's a nice moment in a movie that will make you long for more such scenes as it drags towards its inevitable finale.

The problem with "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" is that it gets all those strong scenes out of the way in the film's first half, only to follow the standard rise-and-fall scenario with jukebox hits accompaniment that we've seen hundreds of times before. Even if you knew nothing about Houston's life, there's not a scene that you won't see coming in advance (other than that early love affair).

Worse, the film spends a lot of time dwelling on the more scandalous elements hounding Houston - namely that her husband, singer Bobby Brown, got her mixed up in some bad things that led her to spiral downward. The scenes in which she confronts him about his infidelity are awkward, and the actor (Ashton Sanders) portraying Brown was seemingly misled to believe that he would be portraying rapper DMX - whose gruff voice and vocal tics he appears to be emulating - and not the New Edition member.

The film's best scenes - other than the earlier ones I mentioned - are those involving Houston's friendship with Davis, who at first tells her that he doesn't get involved in his clients' personal lives, but then proceeds to do so once he begins considering Houston more of a friend. There's also a good scene in which Houston's controlling father - also, why does every music biopic need to involve a controlling family member? - gets a reminder from his daughter about who employs him.

But otherwise, "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" is a movie that you've seen time and time before: talented person gets noticed, they rise to the top, they have relationship struggles, and then they either overcome the odds or - more likely, if this is a rock or pop music biopic - they succumb to their struggles. Ackie does a solid job as Houston and Tucci is quite good as Davis, but this film ultimately has the depth of a VH1 "Behind the Music" episode and, as it goes along, the unfortunate style of a tabloid story.