| TriStar Pictures | Release Date: December 23, 2022 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
12
Mixed:
26
Negative:
6
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Critic Reviews
Dec 21, 2022
It’s easy enough to have problems with Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody. It’s not nearly as truthful or as dramatic as it could have been, and it glosses over things that could have added those elements. But it’s hard to argue with a movie-length experience of listening to Whitney Houston’s voice.
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Dec 21, 2022
Houston basically gets the “Bohemian Rhapsody” treatment in that the film glosses over some of the darkest moments in her life. (in fact, Anthony McCarten is the screenwriter of both films), but it works beautifully as a feature-film biography highlighting one of the most incredible voices and one of the most infectious star personalities of a generation.
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Movie NationDec 21, 2022
These movies are about reminding us how these songs made us feel when they were new, and how bowled over we were by the people who performed them. Ackie, Lemmons & Co. do that, and rescue Houston from her “tragedy” to remind us why the world fell in love with her and once-in-a-generation voice.
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Dec 29, 2022
The movie isn’t a melodramatic tell-all, or a total downer. But it manages, even while being unapologetically entertaining, to feel like an honest reckoning with all the things we didn’t want to know about Houston at her fame’s height. It’s a film that takes our failings into consideration, rather than simply fixating on hers, a summation of all the things she tried to tell us and couldn’t.
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Dec 21, 2022
There’s a constant feeling that a lot of hands were wrestling for the steering wheel of this biopic behind the scenes, with various parties pushing the story this way and that, even with the united goal of collectively crafting the greatest love letter of all. Yet Ackie just keeps her eyes on — and her energy directed toward — delivering a screen-worthy Whitney, scaling the heights and earning her Hall of Fame status.
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Dec 21, 2022
Critics will sniff, as they invariably do, about the familiar conventions of the music biopic. But the spirit of I Wanna Dance With Somebody transcends those conventions far more often than it gets weighed down by them. Anyone who loves Whitney Houston and her music will leave the film with that love reinforced — especially anyone who sees it in a theater with a wall-shaking sound system.
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The TelegraphDec 29, 2022
Dec 23, 2022
Across 146 minutes, the film does its best to cram in every detail on the pop singer and actor (played by Naomi Ackie) and her meteoric ascent from the gospel choir to the Superbowl. Such a tack normally spells only the most surface level engagement with the subject. Unfortunately for this biopic, it follows suit.
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Dec 21, 2022
Across the eras, wardrobe changes, short-lived smiles and bitter tears, and eventually the addiction and scandals, Ackie’s portrayal of Houston stands out not only for lip-synching so precisely and convincingly it makes one wonder if she is in fact singing, but because rather than imitate she seems to simply be trying to channel the cornerstones of her personality.
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Dec 21, 2022
Houston’s magic as a performer was in her unpredictability; her voluminous range, the trailing vocal journey her famous runs took us on from note to note, measure to measure. When she (and Ackie) come alive on stage, Lemmons’ biopic soars with vibrating energy. It’s all the moments in between that grow ever more frustrating — the thin characterization, the flattening of her story into Behind the Music story beats, rushing from milestone to milestone without taking a breath.
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Dec 29, 2022
Better and more candid than anticipated yet still weirdly underwhelming, big-budget Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody achieves the filmmakers’ stated goal of shining a light squarely on the late American singer’s towering talent without camouflaging her also-towering struggles.
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Dec 22, 2022
I Wanna Dance with Somebody is a mighty testament to Houston’s catalog, the cathedral highs and sultry lows of her singular voice. Those songs, at least, are eternal. If a movie that simply presses play on the mix tape is what it takes to remind us of Houston’s special power, then that’s reason enough for the film to exist. But the story behind the songs probably deserves more, and better.
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Dec 21, 2022
Ackie’s performance is something to be cheered, reaching for the the kind of authenticity that Andra Day channeled when she also tackled a doomed musical icon in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” But so much clumsiness, scenes featuring unnaturally heightened drama with little insight and the compromised authenticity of the performances drag I Wanna Dance With Somebody down — ultimately, it’s not right but it’s just OK.
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Dec 21, 2022
This biopic reaches its high point early on, as Bafta-winner Naomi Ackie vividly portrays the pop star during her meteoric ascent. But once the film reaches Houston’s later career, when drugs and a difficult marriage began to take their toll, the story doesn’t just become more downbeat but also more of a slog, falling to find an insightful angle into this slow-motion tragedy.
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Dec 21, 2022
Like Rami Malek’s Freddie Mercury in “Rhapsody,” Ackie’s own voice is heard at times though mainly she’s performing to Houston’s own signature vocals. And the actress does an exceptional job capturing the pop singer’s mannerisms and performance style in those moments. It’s everything else in between that’s the real problem.
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IndieWireDec 21, 2022
A music biopic so broad and hacky it makes “Jersey Boys” seem like “All that Jazz,” Kasi Lemmons’ well-acted but laughably trite Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody is an anonymous portrait of a singular artist — a by-the-numbers “Behind the Music” episode that needs 146 minutes to say almost nothing about a once-in-a-lifetime voice.
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Dec 29, 2022
Dec 21, 2022
The film retroactively makes Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis look like a masterpiece for actually trying to be bedazzling and insane, because Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody is so stale it might as well have been shoved directly onto a streaming platform to wither away forgotten – unlike Houston’s discography, which will be remembered for decades to come.
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Dec 21, 2022
This is just another run-of-the-mill, dramatically limp music biopic meant to be pure brand management. There are so many scenes of Naomi Ackie lip-synching full performances of these songs, and all you can say is, "Yeah, Whitney Houston was such a great singer." I don't need this movie to know that. I can just stay home and listen to her, which is an infinitely more rewarding experience.
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