What went wrong with the hyped up movie "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody" ?

Does she, though?

The marketing campaign was pretty bad, I hardly heard anything about it.

At least it's doing better than Babylon

The campaign made it look light hearted and like it would skip all the dark stuff (which it largely does) and I think people decided they'd rather not waste their time on a censored, family-sanctioned, sanitized version of what was a messy waste of a life. And the movie is largely that, never delving into why she used nor how bad her usage was. There's no drama, no conflict, no depth and there's already been a Lifetime-level TV movie. No need to go to the theatre to essentially see the same shallow shit.

I agree the film was poorly marketed and yes, younger people who are the biggest movie attending audience, are basically the children of Whitney's core fan group.

Whitney was no Freddie Mercury.

Word of mouth was atrocious.

What I know about Whitney could fit on the head of a pin and even I could tell from previews they played fast and loose with dates.

The actress playing Whitney had all the warmth of a hologram.

There have already been a few Whitney bio-pics for TV - so we have already seen this. This new movie is not covering anything new

That and new generation doesn't know who Whitney Houston is

It wasn't promoted at all.

And yes everyone knows she was a druggie who ruined her voice by smoking crack. There's not much else to say, and it's not that interesting.

[quote] It wasn't promoted at all.

I saw an insane number of commercials for it.

But they were playing as early as late summer/early fall for a movie that didn't come out until Christmas.

⬇️⬇️⬇️The critical reception for a formulaic, jukebox musical that is a sanitized version of Whitney's life.

-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.

-Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody is yet another music biopic that feels like a checklist of events rather than riveting drama.

OP, I guess you forgot, but Christmas weekend and several days after saw some of the worst weather, nationwide, that most people have ever seen on a holiday. A lot people spent Christmas in an airport or simply stuck at home.

My boomer parents who I visited wanted to see it, so did I, but we decided it was way too cold to go out to a theater.

consider yourselves lucky R11

The actress who played her is not that cute either.

R7, disagree that young people don't know who Whitney is. I Wanna Dance With Somebody and I Will Always Love You are big hits in streaming and downloads, people haven't forgotten her songs (that's probably why the movie is called I Wanna Dance With Somebody)

I think it's a combination of not enough hype plus what r3 said about the whitewashing

[quote] The campaign made it look light hearted and like it would skip all the dark stuff (which it largely does) and I think people decided they'd rather not waste their time on a censored, family-sanctioned, sanitized version of what was a messy waste of a life.

Family-sanctioned and sanitized didn't help but I really think the casting tanked the film. The actress is probably very talented but she did not look like Whitney, who was a stunningly beautiful print model, and when I saw the actress who was to portray her it was a big let down. Young Whitney was a great beauty and that was an essential component of her appeal and her success. Then I heard the actress wasn't going to sing so I thought "why bother?"

Yea. I kept seeing the promos on TV and the lady playing Whitney looked way too OLD.

I remember when Whitney came on the scene - she was the freshest, hottest thing around. Her songs brought everyone to the dance floor.

The girl in the previews looked like the much older Whitney who was going around proclaiming herself "Diva" and singing and sweating like a linebacker. Don't nobody want to see that.

The Lifetime biopic was sufficient.

Turns out her life wasn’t so interesting

I didn't see it because I don't like watching people ruin their lives with drugs. I see that on the job, why should I pay to see more of it on the big screen?

I’ll watch it on cable. That said, I’ve already seen every TV movie and documentary about Whitney. I’m sure this doesn’t have much new in it

This is honestly the first I've heard of this movie. I've only seen two movies in theatres in the space of a year. Barbarian and M3gan. Everything else I've watched on streaming.

I saw the trailer a bunch of times before other movies; it looked laughably bad.

Every year at Oscar time, Whoopi and Sunny of 'The View' say more black actors and actresses need to be honored, and Sunny questions where are the movies targeted for Black and Hispanic audiences ? Whoopi gets credit for saying, 'they need to be made first', then the actors and actresses will get recognition. Whoopi has also pointed out that black audiences need to support these movies.

The only movie which has been supported that way seems to be 'Wakanda Forever'. Both "Till" and "Whitney" have flopped at the box office, as well as 'Aretha' last year and 'West Side Story'. So it seems that black audiences are not rushing to the theaters to see these movies with black casts, like Whoopi and Sunny expected them to be doing.

The Aretha movie suffered a lot of the same things as the Whitney movie. Tepid at best, worshipping its subject, with no real attempts to give the movie a heart, or nuance, or a story that hasn't been told a million times on Behind The Music.

Bohemian Rhapsody and the Elton John movie were equally tepid in storytelling but in those cases, both Rami Malek and Taron Edgerton were able to transcend the respective scripts' severe limitations.

The real biopic everyone wants to see is Naomi Judd: The Mommie Dearest of Kentucky. Rene Zellweger will lost a hundred pounds and wear 50 pounds worth of facial prosthetics and make-up. Margo Robbie as Ashley recreating the infamous interpretive dance at the Lincoln Memorial. And Rosie O'Donnell as Wynonna having her first scissoring experience dressed in her biker outfit.

R25 is one long

OH DEAR

That does sound fun, R25.

If this movie was heavily marketed, as someone claimed, I missed all the marketing. Yes, I did see some passing references to it, but, having heard nothing about it, I honestly didn't know whether it was a biopic or a documentary. I assume that, whichever it was, it was probably some C-list quickie.

[Quote] The only movie which has been supported that way seems to be 'Wakanda Forever'.

Woman King was also supported

I love Whitney and think of her life story as a real tragedy of exploitation ... it should have been a film I was looking forward to seeing but instead, the minute I saw the trailer I was turned off. The lead actress doesn't have Witney's softness and charm... a real miss. I decided to pass.

[quote]The lead actress doesn't have Witney's softness and charm...

Not interested in seeing any Whitney biopics that don't include this pivotal moment:

I don’t see why this movie is necessary. Everything about her life, from her best performances to her worst spectacles, is already available online. You can even read her autopsy if you want.

r30 here... Whitney had her softness and charm in the pre-bobby era,,,

[quote]Whoopi has also pointed out that black audiences need to support these movies.

People go to the movies to be entertained, not as a defiant act of racial justice!

I guess Whoopie has never heard of Tyler Perry and his massive cut-rate Chitlin Circuit output, or the many offerings supplied by Oprah Winfrey's "O" cable channel?

Black audiences just want quality fare just like everybody else, it's just that some people feel they deserve awards on a yearly basis just for being black.

Aren't there already a bunch of Whitney documentaries that were released in the past few years? The public has probably gotten enough Whitney for a while.

This movie was Clive Davis' celebration of his legacy. I'd be interested in a film that told the real story of Whitney Houston.

I think we're all just getting sick of these fucking biopics. Bohemian Rhapsody was good, but I've had sufficient. No desire to see Elton, Elvis or Whitney.

I also thought "Judy" with Renee Z was disappointing at best when that was released a few years ago. Yet she got an Oscar.

The movie was simply titled "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" when the trailers went out in late summer / early fall. It didn't get much reaction from audiences. Shortly before it's release in December, the studios rushed to retitle it as: "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody", hoping Houston's name would get a better response. It didn't.

That girl on MADTv did a better Whitney than this "actress."

The title is stupid as well.

Too soon for another one. At least it was better than JHud's Aretha bio. I know of no one who raved about that. With all of the interesting films and creative TV around why would you waste your time on either of these bios?

None of them are even close to the truth about their subjects. We haven’t really progressed much beyond NIGHT AND DAY, or A SONG TO REMEMBER, have we?

Sadly, everyone already knew how this one ends.

Because I Wanna Dance With Somebody is a strange title for a film about a crack head.

She certainly wanted to dance with the pipe and the powder

I watched my screener last week. I thought Naomi Ackie did a great job considering she was handed a paint by number script and had to lip sync through the whole thing. The failure of this movie sits squarely on the shoulders of Anthony McCarten, who is the biggest hack currently working in Hollywood. He also has no idea how to construct a timeline. I'm not saying everything has to follow the truth 100%. Things can be altered for dramatic license. But Freddie's fans and Whitney's fans know when certain songs came out and it's really annoying to watch someone completely piss on the history when it doesn't at all contribute to making the story flow better. And if that was McCarten's only fault, it could be forgiven, but he is a terrible writer.

Supporting performances were all over the place. Ashton Sanders ought to get a Razzie nom for his portrayal of Bobby Brown. Poor Tamara Tunie was given very little to do, as McCarten decided to make Daddy the villain and so there was no room for Cissy after the beginning of the film. Stanley Tucci did a good job as Clive Davis, if you actually believe Clive Davis was a sweet old mensch who never got angry or manipulated his artists.

I was a Whitney fan (and still am) but not a super fan, so there were a lot of live performances that they recreated with Whitney's actual vocal that I was hearing for the first time, and for me, that was thrilling because the woman had a VOICE. And since the film itself was such garbage, I appreciated the time they did take to let us hear those performances. I came away from the film with an even bigger admiration for her voice.

Aline, a biopic cum fan tribute to Celine Dion, is a surprisingly entertaining if sometimes surreal movie. I found it free on prime.

Is that the one where the same person plays Celine from a kid to her current age?

She simply didn't do enough pre-release publicity.

So lazy.

I feel biopics are better when the it's a subject relating to real history and thus cannot be easily sanitized like with Malcolm X. Or if the family and estate is not heavily involved because revisionism is inevitable.

I hope Prince never gets a biopic. He's way too complex a person to minimize to a two hour film. Maybe a multiple-season television series and that still wouldn't scratch the surface. Only he understood himself because he was a total enigma to his wives, friends and family. The biopic probably will happen because of his greedy ass family. They love making money off of him.

R36 and R52, totally agree. One of the Whitney docs was great and seemed to tell her real, tragic story (I forget which one...there were two I believe). I have no desire to see a cheesy portrayal of this tragic entertainer in a scripted, sanitized mess of a film. This is why Amy Winehouse, Prince and MJ biopics will NEVER work. It's like "celebrity karaoke" and people don't wanna see that shit. I want the whole story about their lives...the good and the bad. Amy was another heartbreaking yet entertaining documentary.

One thing I felt the film never really covered was why Whitney chose to release such bland, middle-of-the-road music in the 80s. Was that just her taste, or was she playing it safe because she wanted to appeal to as wide an audience as possible?

She did what she was told by her record company R55.

Movie bios are NOT to be trusted.

R43 - And to think when JHud was making the rounds on TV talk shows, every host had to say something to the effect of "I'm hearing Oscar buzz for you and this movie". And she believed them. Then everyone involved with the film was shocked ! - SHOCKED ! - that the film was ignored for better films and acting.

I thought that having Cary Grant play me in "Night and Day" was perfect casting.

People are tired of biopics of singers. Anyone remember this film? Andra Day won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar.

"I feel biopics are better when the it's a subject relating to real history and thus cannot be easily sanitized l"

If Whitney's story has a place in history, it's as a casualty of the drug epidemic that swept across the civilized world in the late 20th century.

And that's what was sanitized out of the film, right? Seriously, take away the drugs and what's left - a pretty girl singing mainstream hits. Which we can all get on youtube for free.

[quote] [R43] - And to think when JHud was making the rounds on TV talk shows, every host had to say something to the effect of "I'm hearing Oscar buzz for you and this movie". And she believed them. Then everyone involved with the film was shocked ! - SHOCKED ! - that the film was ignored for better films and acting.

JHud was great, the movie sucked. Her performance was the best thing about it. I am a big Aretha fan and JHud evoked Aretha for me. She disappeared and became Aretha. It is an accomplishment for a singer of note to put forth a credible portrayal of another very well-known and familiar singer.

R6, so did Whitney. She was a very unpleasant tough woman-

And we really haven't heard much more about Andra Day since Oscar night, 2021.

[quote]Or if the family and estate is not heavily involved because revisionism is inevitable.

r52 exactly. The family and estate authorized biopics are usually trash and totally revisionist. I applaud any celebrity who lets the real story be told. Wendy Williams didn't do a great job with Aaliyah's biopic, but her own was very truthful and people enjoyed it.

I really wanted Aaliyah to get a big screen story like her family wanted, but I'm sure it would omit all the controversial things like R. Kelly, and people have had enough with these biopics.

I would have called it "Just the Lonely Talking Again" after an album cut. And one of her best songs, IMO.

[quote] JHud evoked Aretha for me. She disappeared and became Aretha. It is an accomplishment for a singer of note to put forth a credible portrayal of another very well-known and familiar singer.

This boggles the mind. Jennifer Hudson is a terrible actress.

I never ever saw JHud disappear and become Aretha. Never. She was playing JHud.

JHud wasn’t even that good in her role in DREAMGIRLS. She seems like a very nice person, but she’s not all that.

JHUD at her worst was the Sex and the City Movie (the second one, I think). I STILL love to reenact the moment when she is gifted new shoes. It the worst acting I've ever seen.

She was just okay as Effie in Dreamgirls. That was an Oscar bait role for whoever got it. She lucked out big time with that part. A fat Fantasia would have been a MUCH more interesting choice.

Lousy movie about a supremely gifted singer who rocketed to success and then declined in a spiral of substance abuse all the while trying to be something she was not. Hard to make a good movie about it unless you end it in the mid 80s.

End it in the mid 80s ? That would be an awfully short movie since Houston got her start in the mid 80s. It would run about 15 minutes covering her entry into pop music that summer.

Boring, very sanitized, fangurl version.

"...gifted singer who rocketed to success and then declined in a spiral of substance abuse all the while trying to be something she was not."

If they'd actually made THIS movie, the movie about a bisexual addict who was being forced into the "pop princess" mold, it might have been interesting, or even good. But well, it seems they tried to make a feel-good movie about an addict who died of her addictions, which is as dishonest as filmmaking gets.

If they cast Austin Butler in the role of Houston, we'd be talking Oscar buzz for him right now.

I think one of the issues is I am not sure that Whitney's music is as loved as it's made out to be. It doesn't seem to have the same connection with newer generations as Michael Jackson or Queen.

Also, it just wasn't a very good movie. Kasi Lemmons did such an amazing job with her first film, Eve's Bayou but her subsequent films have been really disappointing. I thought Harriet, another biography, was very flat, just like this film.

It's tv movie fodder. We saw her deteriorate on reality tv, why pay to see it in the theater?

Whoever the continuity and era expert was on this film should never work again. It gets everything wrong with the look. Clothes are from different periods. A 2006 Escalade in scenes from 1993. An exterior shot of 2010s Chrysler 300 limo that turns into an 89 Cadillac then inside its a 2000s Lincoln. Lots a small stuff that most people probably don’t notice. The look of many scenes and locations is so CGI they look ridiculous.

A lot of biopics suffer from not having any real story. Just a birth to death timeline of events with no plot. It’s like a Halloween party where they reenact big moments in someone’s career.

“What’s Love Got to Do with It”, “Private Parts”, and “Walk The Line” were stories centered around relationships. Ike and Tina, Howard and his wife Alison, and Johnny and June. Even “Amadeus” was about his rivalry with Salieri (which wasn’t real), “The People vs Larry Flynt” was about Larry Flynt vs the fight against pornography.

Good biopics typically choose 2 stories about a persons life and make them into two plots that create a story.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” sucked. It had no story and neither did this movie.

You could just piece together YouTube videos of the actual performances and you’d have 95% of the movie.

"... the movie about a bisexual addict who was being forced into the "pop princess" mold"

That was my biopic!

The costumes look like a drag queen made them in their grandma’s basement

I'm not going to lie. I rarely get this stuff wrong but I thought this was going to be huge. All of America loved Whitney and the trailer looked so good. I bet in the days of Blockbuster and cable this would have been a huge success despite a mediocre box office.

Is it at least better than that shitty telefilm bio that Angela Bassett directed? Now, that was a 💩 of a movie. Made me hate Angela for a second.

Suprising though that it's doing better internationally, almost 60M worlwide now. It's especially big in the UK. Maybe because the lead actress is a Brit.

R86 No I think it's the post pandemic here really. I bet itd going to do well on streaming. The only profitable theater movies have been must see, big events. You get my drift.

Instead of I Wanna Dance with Somebody this should’ve been called How Will I Know?

I just watched this on Netflix last night. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. Some observations

- It was way too long. They could've shaved 30 minutes off the run time.

- Naomi Ackle looks nothing like Whitney Houston. She looked more like Brandy Norwood. The fact that there was zero resemblance to Whitney was really distracting.

- They made Cissy Houston look too good, and they made Whitney's father the villain. I'm guessing that's because Whitney's dad is dead and that cunt Cissy is still alive. I'malso guessing because Pat Houston was one of the producers, she wanted to make sure she didn't piss off Cissy too much.

- They actually were brave enough to acknowledge that Whitney and Robyn were lovers, though when Whitney married Bobby, they made it seem that Robyn didn't really have much of a problem with it. Pretty sure that wasn't the case in real life.

- They did a good job of recreating some of Whitney's videos.

Overall, it was a fairly standard biopic - the rise, the fall, the comeback, and the fall again. A different actress for Whitney could have elevated the quality.

This movie was about Whitney?!?

I thought it was a promotional reel for Clive Davis, to show what a musical and business genius he is, no?

It was hyped in terms of "Whitney was a huge star and this is her biopic," but it was made of fun of really from the jump. There was no critical hype and the more people saw it, the worse the buzz became.

Ridiculous. Too bad Deb Wilson is old and tatted up.

[Quote] OP, I guess you forgot, but Christmas weekend and several days after saw some of the worst weather, nationwide, that most people have ever seen on a holiday. A lot people spent Christmas in an airport or simply stuck at home.

[Quote] My boomer parents who I visited wanted to see it, so did I, but we decided it was way too cold to go out to a theater.

and now everyone has forgotten the film R11 and nobody saw the film because they chose to stay home.

It's too expensive to go to the movies. Especially for families. It's easier to have a movie night and pop the corn at home, and a hell of a lot more comfortable. I'm of the belief that only teens and early 20's are actively going to the theater again. They want bragging rights on social media. **eyeroll**

It would have been better with Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis as Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis in a scene where Whitney explores sobriety with the intersex crowd

I wanna drown with somebody, with somebody who’s got crack.

Coulda been worse…

OP in a word: EVERYTHING!

R48: agree about the timing of songs. Maybe it makes me on some sort of spectrum but it drives me nuts when simple things like that are done incorrectly. They have Whitney recording Where Do Broken Hearts Go for the first album. Showing a great vocal performance of One Moment In Time (from the late 80s I’m guessing) right after a scene where Clive Davis speaks to Whitney about her voice suffering (which I doubt he would have done till the mid 90s) was stupid too.

Whitney was just a performer, with lots of bad shows towards the end.

Freddie was a genius composer with a backlog of stellar performances.

R100 the continuity was ridiculous

It was bad—laugh outloud bad at some points—but not as bad as its reviews. The lead actress is good. Some of the scenes between her and the Bobby actor were quite good and legit funny. All in all, I liked it better than the Aretha bio pick starring Jennifer Hudson

R103 the JHud Aretha pic was too unnnhumph 💅🏾

Was it at least better than that Lifetime claptrap that Angela Bassett directed? Now, that was awful.

It was too soon, people struggle to feel empathy with someone who destroyed themselves. She wasn't a true artist in any case, just a jukebox singing other people's songs.

A Debbie Reynolds biopic might have done more at the box office.

[quote]She wasn't a true artist in any case, just a jukebox singing other people's songs.

What a moronic thing to say.

"She wasn't a true artist in any case, just a jukebox singing other people's songs."

So was Elvis but that movie was a hit

If they had called it "Miss Warwick's Less Talented Cousin" DLers would have showed up en masse.

Perhaps "Miss Warwick's Less-But-Not-Least-Talented Cousin, R109.

Cissy owes me $13.23 for lunch last week and I want her to know there are fucking consequences.

R98 THAT movie seems to have disappeared the same weekend it opened. More than a decade in the making, and poof! it's gone.

Agree with R89. I just saw this on a plane and everyone was watching it. I don’t remember any publicity for it or even that it came out, so it was news to me.

I enjoyed it but I also don’t think Robyn went quietly. I wish they had dealt more with the “closet kills” angle because in my opinion, her not being able to live as her true self killer her. That’s why she used- to escape her family and their expectations of her. They touched on it a little but not enough. I felt deeply sad for Whitney after watching it. Was she ever happy after becoming a big star? I wish she hadn’t purchased that last hit and taken that stupid bath after doing it. She may have been able to come back.

R112 Actually, in real life, Robyn *did* go quietly.

When she realized Whitney was too deep into her addiction and there was nothing she could for her, Robyn literally walked out of Whitney's life.

R113 that's sad. I think Robyn was the love of her life. She should have stayed with her.

R114 ABC aired a really good documentary on Whitney Houston last year, and there was a really surprising statement from Bobby Brown at the end of it. He said if Whitney's family had accepted Robyn, Whitney might still be alive today.

Debra Wilson was brilliant as a later career Whitney and was her time on mad tv was perfect timing as that was around the time Whitney started going off the rails publicly, around 1998.

Perhaps if the movie focused on the last chapter/years of her life and career it would’ve been more interesting but Clive, pat and cissy wouldn’t let that happen. The actress is very talented but it’s didn’t capture any of the megawatt star power she had for a time, I don’t know if anyone could.

Also, maybe it is too soon for a bio pic. Elvis has been dead for 45 years and Freddie was dead for 25 when their movies came out.

Coal Miners Daughter is still the gold standard for a musical bio pic.

Cissy is a horrible woman. People seem to be afraid to say that. But it’s true. Whitney’s brothers and father were freeloading off of her too. She paid for her brother’s’ addictions as well. Damn Whitney for getting hooked on that shit too.

Her whole immediate family was a bunch of mooches.

Sing. Deny lesbian relationship. Snort coke. Sing more. Marry crackhead. Smoke crack. Sing really badly. Attempt comeback while on drugs. Sing even worse. Go to awards show. Snort coke. Drown in bathtub of Beverly Hilton Hotel.

The End

I kinda liked it.

The actress they got to play Whitney looked more like Bobby Brown in a wig.

R117: so true. The two Whitney documentaries that came out 4-5 years ago show that more than the film, which of course couldn’t show Cissy in a bad light as it was made with the family’s involvement. Bobby wasn’t good for Whitney (and I think she retreated from the limelight so as not to outshine him after The Bodyguard and I hate him for his part in robbing us of more Whitney music at peak vocal time) but she was fucked from day 1 with the mother, father and brothers she had.

The two members of The Sweet Inspirations don’t have nice things to say about Cissy.

It should've gone straight to streaming. It's not doing bad in Netflix - it's the #1 film in the US last week.

When I saw Cissy interviewed and she said she'd disown Whitney for being a lesbian, I was finished with that evil fucking cunt.

She's a big reason why her daughter was driven to drugs and an early death.

Whitney definitely got her looks from her father. Cissy has terminal bitch face.