I’ve no plans to see the new Whitney Houston biopic, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, despite listening to the soundtrack – all two and a half sodding hours of it. (Naomi Ackie lip-synchs her way through the whole shebang, by the way.)
Whitney Houston’s not a singer I had a lot of time for, as I said before.
Too plastic, too polished, too pretend – basically, it’s Diana Ross with a louder “look at me“ voice, and at times even whiter than Michael Jackson.
When she held that too long A Major on Dolly Parton‘s I Will Always Love You it sounded like the pleasing earsoothe of the QE2 announcing her arrival in Southampton, after a vomitcomet passage ‘cross the wilding Atlantic. Yes, that good.
Anyway, this unnecessary film’s been written by the same guy who penned Bohemian Catastrophe AND it’s produced by Clive Davis.
He’s the Arista mentor who whitened and sweetened her for the widest saccharine consumption, so you know it’s gonna be a whitewash more sanitised than a vat of Domestos.
The whole contrived story is common knowledge these days anyway.
Because despite the convenient marriage to the more ‘street’ Bobby Brown (which horrified Davis), after everything even Stevie Wonder could see rug will save the day.
Steve Pafford
First published: Facebook, December 2022
