I Wanna Dance with Somebody
A conventional musical biopic is given a leg-up by some bold narrative choices and a stellar turn from Naomi Ackie.
Nafessa Williams and Naomi Ackie
The poster screams: “This Christmas celebrate the untold story of an icon!” Which is odd. The life of Whitney Houston has been chronicled many times in all sorts of media, notably in the remarkable rival films, Kevin Macdonald’s Whitney (2018) – actually authorized by the Houston estate – and Nick Broomfield and Rudi Dolezal’s Whitney: Can I Be Me (2017). And that doesn’t include Angela Bassett’s biopic, which was also called Whitney and starred Yaya DaCosta in the title role, or the stage show or the tribute show or Cissy Houston’s memoir Remembering Whitney or… I could go on.
Be that as it may, Whitney’s was an extraordinary life and the songs that accompanied it were and still are genuinely iconic. The director Kasi Lemmons previously recorded the history of another American icon, the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, and on that occasion she also cast an English actress (Cynthia Erivo). However, with the London-born Naomi Ackie, Lemmons has hit cinematic gold, framing a performance of phenomenal wattage and range.
Whitney was dubbed ‘The Voice’ and her breadth encompassed many a musical style, as she claimed: “music is not a colour to me – it has no boundaries.” With that in mind, Lemmons was shrewd to use the singer’s own vocals, allowing Ackie to mime the hit songs with an uncanny assimilation of the Whitney delivery. Well, she didn’t mime exactly – she really did sing the songs – but Whitney’s voice was dubbed over later. And to prove that she can sing herself, Ackie does deliver renditions of ‘Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah’ and ‘Jesus Loves Me’.
There has been quite a slew of musical biographies of late, with the likes of Rami Malek and Renée Zellweger winning Oscars for their pains as, respectively, Freddie Mercury and Judy Garland. And there have been recent big screen biogs of Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday and Ma Rainey, so do we really need another? Whitney Houston, who died in 2012 at the age of 48, does hold a special place in the public’s heart, boasting more musical accolades than any other female vocalist in history. And she had more consecutive number ones in the US charts than any other act, male, female or The Beatles. So there’s obviously an audience to hear her beloved songs belted out yet again, regardless of whose mouth they come out of. And Kasi Lemmons’ film, scripted by Anthony McCarten (who also wrote Bohemian Rhapsody), is a more than serviceable addition to the genre. It adheres to the usual pattern: the early slog at perfection, the sudden thrill of hearing your first song on the radio, the adoring fans and then the inevitable descent into self-indulgence and substance abuse.
Often, it is the first half of the story that is the most engaging, and so it is here, although Lemmons and McCarten have engineered some canny segues. There’s a masterful sequence that bridges Whitney’s delivery of ‘I Will Always Love you’ (from The Bodyguard) to her historical performance in South Africa to honour Nelson Mandela (in front of 200,000 people), to her wedding day. As it happens, her nuptials to Bobby Brown failed to echo the sentiment of the song. There’s also an early scene that is strangely moving, as a young Whitney is castigated by her mother Cissy Houston (Tamara Tunie) for putting her vocal flourishes before the narrative and melody of the song she is rehearsing. With Cissy for a mother and Dionne Warwick a first cousin, it seemed impossible for the young girl to match up. Huh! And then there’s the finale, when she sings ‘I Loves You, Porgy’, ‘And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going’ and ‘I Have Nothing’ in one go, a feat she had earlier deemed impossible to pull off. It’s an exhilarating climax to an astonishing career.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Naomi Ackie, Stanley Tucci, Ashton Sanders, Nafessa Williams, Tamara Tunie, Clarke Peters, Dave Heard, Bria Danielle Singleton, Bailee Lopes, Daniel Washington.
Dir Kasi Lemmons, Pro Denis O'Sullivan, Jeff Kalligheri, Anthony McCarten, Pat Houston, Clive Davis, Larry Mestel, Molly Smith, Thad Luckinbill, Trent Luckinbill, Matt Jackson, Christina Papagjika and Matthew Salloway, Ex Pro Naomi Ackie and Kasi Lemmons, Screenplay Anthony McCarten, Ph Barry Ackroyd, Pro Des Gerald Sullivan, Ed Daysha Broadway, Music Chanda Dancy, Costumes Charlese Antoinette Jones, Sound Samir Foco, Dialect coaches Denise Woods and Bridgett Jackson.
TriStar Pictures/Compelling Pictures/Black Label Media/Primary Wave Entertainment/Muse of Fire Productions/West Madison Entertainment/TSG Entertainment II-Sony Pictures.
144 mins. USA. 2022. US Rel: 23 December 2022. UK Rel: 26 December 2022. Cert. 12A.
