Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody

RATING (* * * * 2022 - Musical/Drama - 2h 26m)

A joyous emotional heartbreaking celebration of the life and music of Whitney Houston one of the greatest female R&B pop vocalists of all time tracking her journey from obscurity to musical superstardom.

Cast: Stanley Tucci Naomi Ackie Nafessa Williams

Release date: 26 December 2022

Official Trailer

Review

*** IMDB
% TOMATOMETER
% AUDIENCE SCORE

When British actor Naomi Ackie is having a "karaoke moment" there's one Whitney Houston song - without fail - that she always turns to.

"It's so cheesy because it's the title of our film but I Wanna Dance With Somebody is a CLASSIC!" Ackie laughs from New York where she's chatting to SMARTdaily via video link.

"At karaoke or at a bar or at a club ... when it comes on and the key change happens that's a classic song right there. I dare anyone not to sing or dance to it - it's a banger."

Unsurprisingly it was "a dream come true" for the British actor when she was cast as Houston in the big screen biopic of the brilliant yet troubled star.

Ackie who broke out in films such as Lady Macbeth and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker concedes that taking on the role of Houston - her first major lead in a film - was daunting.

"Daunted was a big one for me" she says. "Excited yes full of anticipation for sure. I remember my sister saying to me 'How do you feel?' and I said 'I feel like I'm a baby looking up at a mountain and I know I can get onto the other side and all I can do is take one step at a time'.

"It didn't feel insurmountable but it definitely felt like a journey and that's what it was."

Ackie spent eight months preparing to play Houston before a single scene was shot.

"I think I had the right instinct about it because it's not like you just watch a few YouTube videos and you're like 'Right I've got it!'" she says.

The lifelong Londoner says she worked with three vocal coaches to get the very American Houston's breathy speaking voice just right ("from the ages of 19 to 48 her voice changed so we worked a lot on that") while she also studied Houston's body language and dance style with a movement coach.

Ackie who has a gorgeous singing voice of her own didn't do her own vocals in the film given the difficulties in replicating Houston's staggering mezzo-soprano range.

"The only person who can sing like Whitney Houston was Whitney Houston let's face it" Ackie's co-star Stanley Tucci who plays music mogul Clive Davis told Entertainment Tonight in the US. "But (Naomi) has a beautiful voice herself so she's singing these songs along with the playback and it gives you chills."

The film was authorised by the Houston family (Houston's sister-in-law Pat Houston serves an executive producer as does the man who discovered the star Clive Davis) so the filmmakers were given carte blanche to use any of Houston's music for the movie which gives it an emotional heft.

Ackie says the family particularly Pat Houston were all "incredibly supportive".

"They had a lot to say. They would speak to me about Whitney's lasting impression on them - stories they thought would help me understand her better. There were some moments where I was very much pinching myself" Ackie says.

"I got to meet Whitney's brother Gary Houston and give him a hug and say thank you for allowing me to do this and to give him love for his sister and that meant a lot to me."

The biopic is directed by Kasi Lemmons (Harriet) and written by Anthony McCarten who also wrote the script for Bohemian Rhapsody (which nabbed Rami Malek an Oscar for his portrayal as Queen's Freddie Mercury). It traces Houston's life from her upbringing in New Jersey where she performed with her mother Cissy Houston an established gospel and soul singer through her rise to fame her tumultuous relationship with husband Bobby Brown her well-publicised battle with drugs and her untimely death from a drug-induced drowning in 2012 aged just 48.

The 30-year-old Ackie is too young to remember Houston's mid 1980s-early 1990s peak and she says she can't remember the more troubling moments of the star's life either.

"I don't remember when Whitney was going through the harder periods of her life - I don't remember seeing any of that I was a bit too young" she says.

"But I have loads of friends who refer to her as 'Aunty Whitney' - she feels familial and like home to us. I know that there are songs in her repertoire that are for every moment every mood every emotion.

"I think it's strange to get up close to someone that you've thought you've known all these years but had never met."

The film doesn't shy away from Houston's struggle with drugs nor does it paper over her relationship with lover-turned-best friend Robyn Crawford a storyline that's been all too absent from any conversation surrounding Houston over the years. (Crawford's 2019 memoir A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston finally brought the former couple's relationship into the spotlight.) And in the film Crawford (played by Nafessa Williams) and Davis come across as being among the few people who genuinely had Houston's back even if they couldn't save her.

Watching the film it does make one wonder if Houston had been coming through today whether the world would have been a bit kinder to her in allowing her to be more open about her sexuality.

Ackie isn't sure.

"My honest answer is I don't know because I'm not part of the music industry" she says.

"I don't really know what the pressures are now that musicians are having to contend with. I would like to think she would have had an easier time but then again I think about actors and musicians now and young people having to deal with social media and I'm not so sure.

"I do know that for the time she was around and the things she was doing and the boundaries she was pushing in terms of her music in terms of her relationships with her family and her friends she was a pioneer.

"She was doing a lot of things that allow a lot of musicians and actors who are working today to be able to do what we do."

The future certainly looks bright for Ackie. She's currently filming Zoe Kravitz's directorial debut Pussy Island alongside Channing Tatum and she's just wrapped production on Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho's Mickey 17 where she stars alongside Toni Collette. Working opposite the Australian star was a bucket list moment for Ackie. "I love Toni" she says giddily.

"But I saved telling her that until the last day that we were working together.

"I said to her 'I just wanted to say that I've been watching your career since I was a kid and it just made me want to be an actor like you and to have a career like yours'. I just love her!

"Oh God" continues Ackie with a generous laugh. "I hope I didn't scare her!"