Movie Review: I Wanna Dance With Somebody Is A Surprise Hit
I was genuinely surprised by how good I Wanna Dance With Somebody was as a film. With one of the best promotion installments in NYC I have seen, at least for IG influencers, the movie looked splashy and fun, as a trailer, but promised to be a serious, honest look at The Voice´s life. Written by Anthony McCarten, whom did make the excellent Bohemian Rhapsody, I, oddly, had my doubts because Whitney Houston is iconic and her memory, at times, can be saintly canonized.
We have done it to other icons like, Marilyn Monroe or Amy Winehouse, bully them in life to then make them glamorous staples of how poorly, as a society, we treat mental health, trauma, and women with talent. We turn them into manufactured post-images of Pop Culture and fetishize their. In that vein, we did the same to Whitney when she was alive…. trashed her about trashing herself, and, when she died, proceeded to act like she was untouchable, regal, and, somehow, never aged beyond The Bodyguard. I mention this because that type of societal behavior is what, in the end, killed her.
The keyword of this film is ¨Princess,¨ and LORD is it repeated as Whitney goes down a sinkhole of poor choices in men, drugs, and familial dynamics. She was a prodigious child whose parents saw her as a sincere opportunity to achieves dreams they could not for themselves, but when it came to her love for a woman, privacy, and financial control…..the princess was getting out of line to them. While, admittedly, this film is NOT the best film of all time nor is it one of the greatest, music movies based off a superstar´s life, director Kasi Lemmons does a powerful job at sealing an oft ignored truth about Hollywood: it is the last place for a family.
Naomi Ackie does a fabulous job at emanating the deep loneliness of Whitney. She is feisty, funny, and vibrantly talented, but such qualities die, eventually, when you are surrounded by vipers claiming to protect you. Truthfully, I do not know how involved her family, including Bobby Brown, were in the making of this film because none them walked away with Oscars for great family affairs. In fact, the film hammers the importance of Robyn (played gracefully by Nafessa Williams) in Whitney’s life as an anchor of love and genuine care that contrasted her family’s lack of it. Even Cissy, played masterfully by Tamara Tunie), comes off as harsh and too cold to her daughter´s self-destruction.
By the end of the film, I was devastated for Whitney, and even felt so immersed by the movie that I, oddly, prayed it did not end how I knew it would. Perhaps, it was Stanley Tucci’s exceptional performance as Clive Davis that gave me hope someone would save our queen because he really did try. Yet, how far can a tiny anchor go in stabilizing a Titanic of trauma and self-medication. I give Kudos to the film for trying to approach Whitney’s flaws without judging her. She was an addict that made some really bad, personal choices, while also being one of the greatest singers to ever live, a real sweetheart, and a universal standard on what it is to be a superstar. Both truths can mutually exist without canceling the other or her.
