Year of Release: 2022
Director: Kasi Lemmons
Starring: Naomi Ackie, Stanley Tucci, Ashton Sanders, Tamara Tunie, Nafessa Williams, Clarke Peters, Daniel Washington, Kris Sidberry, Dave Heard
Genre: Drama
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 2
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
The success of Bryan Singer's "Bohemian Rhapsody" has opened the floodgates for a series of late and iconic singers' lives to be portrayed on the big screen, which has since included Dexter Fletcher's "Rocketman" (based on the life of Elton John), and upcoming features which will focus on the lives of Amy Winehouse and Michael Jackson (at least for now). Director Kasi Lemmons (who started her career as an actress, including Jonathan Demme's "Silence of the Lambs"), whose most recent directorial effort "Harriet", was also a dramatic rendering of the life of an iconic individual, namely Harriet Tubman's, illustrates the script from celebrated screenwriter Anthony McCarten (who previously wrote Joe Wright's "Darkest Hour", James Marsh's "The Theory of Everything" and also Bryan Singer's "Bohemian Rhapsody"). The film focuses on the life of Whitney Houston and her humble beginnings as a backup singer for her mother and also singing in the choir of her church. While her mother is strict, Whitney's talent is quite apparent and following a performance in a club where Clive Davis is in the audience, he quickly signs her up for Arista Records. At the same time, Whitney finds a stable romantic relationship with Robyn Crawford. After the success of her debut album and her first live TV performance, Houston's star is on the rise. Looking to keep Robyn close by, Whitney wants to hire her as an assistant, something her father disapproves of. Eventually their romantic relationship fizzles, but they keep their professional relationship intact. Whitney eventually gets tangled with Bobby Brown, who has a bad boy reputation and while they have a rocky start to their relationship, they eventually get married. Their marriage is peppered by friction, including drug usage, but they eventually have a daughter and manage to stay together. Whitney becomes aware of issues in her career management prompted by her father, which leads to his dismissal as he nears the end of his life. Whitney's own turmoil and drug issues continue, until she attempts a comeback starting with a Grammy party.
The rise and fall of a rock star is something that has been the focus of innumerable stories. Bradley Cooper's recent adaptation of "A Star is Born" is a good example of it. This take on the life of Whitney Houston however is a pale rendition of someone who always had a larger than life persona, and whose life was also peppered with many publicly visible challenges (courtesy of reality shows). The script is a somewhat sanitized version of someone's life, failing even to give Whitney Houston, the character/person, a personality beyond the artist facade she puts on for everyone to consume (and whenever the facade does crumble it only does so for very little periods of time). The struggles and challenges that do appear, either with her family, or her sexuality, and eventually her romantic relationships, are superficially illustrated and demonstrate very little of what she actually wanted (aside from wanting a family). Whatever demons haunted this character, very few of them see the light of day in this feature, which chooses instead to focus quite a bit on the music choices she had throughout her career. It's a film that reads more like a LifeTime or Movie of the Week type of rendition, one that bears no distinct point of view, and it's merely illustrating a well known formula. It fails to illustrate someone's cultural background, ambition and challenges in life, even if in the end that makes them more human. As it is, it reads like promotional material for someone who didn't need it to begin with. Highlights in the cast include Tamara Tunie and Clarke Peters' performances: they're both riveting and manage to bring some edge and dimension to underwritten roles. The cinematography from Barry Ackroyd is fantastic, as is Gerald Sullivan's production Design. Ultimately, this is a mediocre feature unworthy of the talent of the person depicted in it.
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