Owen Gleiberman’s rave this past week did not convince me that the upcoming Whitney Houston biopic will be anything more than a glorified TV movie.
Now, at the 11th hour, Sony’s also changed the title of the movie, a little more than a week before release. The original “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” has been replaced with “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody.” Panic?
You’re trying to tell me that the demographic for this movie wouldn’t know that that the titular song was by Whitney? Now the film is veering even more into Lifetime movie territory.
What is going on with this movie? There’s barely any buzz happening, the very select few who’ve seen it have been tight-lipped about it and there’s this overall sense that it’s basically being dumped by Sony.
Back in April, a the Whitney Houston biopic was test-screened in Vegas. Here’s a repost of the reaction I published:
“This was a standard biopic, but Naomi Ackie is amazing as Whitney. Moonlight’s Ashton Sanders was so good as Bobby Brown. Stanley Tucci as Clive Barker is also good, charming and funny, they even note Davis’ bisexuality.”
“Brown is portrayed as a little worm. They highlight that Whitney was 6 years older than him and he was trouble from the get-go. It’s all very lighthearted, until it’s not. This was penned by the same guy who wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody” but at least here he got to tell the dirty details.”
“All in all a solid 150 minute movie. Barry Ackroyd shot it. They spend a great deal showing Whitney’s lesbian relationship. Much like in ‘Bohemian’ there’s re-enactments of Whitney’s iconic musical performances and such. Those were highlights, but it’s very digitally shot, not much of an auteur movie for Kasi Lemmons, and kinda bland-looking, but I liked it.”
Thatcher shows up on-screen for, at most, 10 seconds. She looks remarkably like Thatcher and comes off as almost too polished, non-human like. Further clues are pointing at AI.