Review: ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ Is an Editing Nightmare
Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston in Sony Pictures’ I Wanna Dance With Somebody.
The tragic life of easily one of the greatest voices to ever bless this Earth’s air is reduced in I Wanna Dance With Somebody to a set of bullet points that someone must have written on a whiteboard inside Sony’s headquarters.
The film, from director Kasi Lemmons (Harriet), is a soulless, unfocused, and messy work that feels as if an executive had mandated an almost-decent three-hour Whitney Houston biopic to stay within the two-hour range. The editing moves so fast from one underwritten scene to another that the public never has time to feel any of the emotions the actors so want to convey. Naomi Ackie (The Rise of Skywalker) plays the lead in the film, at least as long as she’s not singing — in the movie’s biggest homage to the true talent that Houston was, the sound department is mixing in recordings of Whitney during her performances, a true testament that nobody can do it as she did. But even then, it is painfully obvious the movie magic doesn’t exist here, when the lips are forming different sounds from the ones our ears receive.
Meet Whitney Elizabeth Houston, the choir soloist in her church, who always says her middle name when introducing herself… until the movie forgets about it and never brings that up again. This was the first hint there might be something truly wrong with how the filmmakers approached the setup-reminder-payoff basic editing rule, but definitely not the last. She is talented, there is no doubt about it, but as she explains to her new acquaintance Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams), so is her entire family. Her mom, country-famous singer Cissy Houston, has been expecting greatness from her since she decided to be a singer, and being Aretha Franklin’s niece doesn’t help when trying to make a name for herself either.
Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston and Nafessa Williams as Robyn Crawford in Sony Pictures’ I Wanna Dance With Somebody.
Ms. Houston, who changes from being the classic “you’ll never be as good as me” imposing mother figure to being Whitney’s biggest fan in a split second, pretends to be unable to sing when music producer Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci) comes into her club. Whitney must go out by herself and make the frowned Davis see the light for the first time in his life. He does (though, as usual, his attitude will significantly change after we meet him, without any connectivity provided), and soon signs her on with one of the biggest first-time deals his company has ever done. He is also quick to let her know that he doesn’t get involved with her artists, which isn’t brought up again until the very end of the film in a very anticlimactic way. Houston’s popularity goes through the roof after she is invited to sing in late night television and starts putting out her first singles.
At the time, she’s also starting a serious relationship with Robyn, though as soon as her (morally imperfect) father shows his disapproval, she immediately starts going out with men. All of this happens while the audience, along with Houston, barely have any time to breathe. If the point of a biopic is to make us understand the person, I Wanna Dance With Somebody must be the anti-biopic. There isn’t really a chance for us to connect with her on a human level, because we barely see her react to everything going on around her, let alone see her make decisions that show us her true character.
Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston in Sony Pictures’ I Wanna Dance With Somebody.
It is not until its last few minutes that the film finally pauses for a second and tries to let the audience in, with Lemmons actually taking a bit of a swing to try to make a point. It was too little too late, and even then, without getting into much detail, it was very heavy-handed from a directing point of view. Lemmons’ direction was at its weakest when working with Naomi Ackie. It’s obvious that Tucci needed fewer directions (he easily gives the best performance of the film), while Ackie, less experienced, would have benefitted from stronger pointers. I started to see Whitney and not the actress toward the end of the film, but until then, the performance came off as very bland to me (though we could argue she didn’t have a lot to go off from).
She was even robbed from what could have been the best moment in the entire film — Whitney’s iconic singing of the national anthem during the Super Bowl (seen in the trailer) could have been the most triumphant scene of I Wanna Dance With Somebody, but it was so poorly edited that we cut to the song right in the middle, stripping us from any complete attachment to it. Instead of climbing up the mountain, reaching the top, and rolling down from there, as it should have been, we started the song right after she started rolling down. Even when the film gets around to introducing her drug problems, we see her already affected by them, instead of struggling with them from the beginning.
Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston in Sony Pictures’ I Wanna Dance With Somebody.
It’s unclear to me if the original script, by Bohemian Rhapsody‘s Anthony McCarten, was in better shape than what is actually on screen, but poor editing is also an issue I had with the Rami Malek-led Freddie Mercury biopic, so, by common denominator, maybe it’s actually the writer’s fault. That being said, I really liked The Two Popes, which he also penned.
All in all, I Wanna Dance With Somebody tried to tackle too many ideas too fast, and in the end, none of them really worked because it didn’t give them proper time to breathe and develop. It lacked any emotional attachment because the scenes are mostly self-contained and don’t have a true sense of continuity. I am convinced, however, that once Hollywood decides to make another Whitney Houston biopic in a few years, there is absolute potential there for an outstanding film.
I Wanna Dance With Somebody is currently playing in theaters worldwide.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
