I Wanna Dance With Somebody film review — glittery Whitney Houston biopic plays the hits

So many sequins. So much plissé polyester lamé. Enough rhinestones to make up a playpit of sparkle for all the toddlers of the world. If nothing else, the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody is at least festive, bursting as it is with glittery adornments.

What’s the downside, you may ask. Well, it doesn’t build much of a case for why you should admire, let alone love and mourn, the late chanteuse (a credibly cast Naomi Ackie) unless you were already a fan. Instead, effectively one long frantic montage, like the 1980-90s pop videos Houston starred in, it hurriedly races through the ups and downs of her life as sanctioned by official guardians of her legacy, such as music industry mentor Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci, channelling a camp rabbi).

Davis is listed in the credits as one of the film’s producers, as is Patricia Houston, Whitney’s sister-in-law and former manager, which might explain why the director Kasi Lemmons got access to recordings of the real Whitney singing, to which Ackie gamely lip-syncs. As a biopic, it seems reasonably accurate, covering Whitney’s complex romantic entanglements with both men and women and her weakness for drugs that preceded her ever meeting fellow pop star Bobby Brown.

But then again, not having read all the biographies, I’m only judging it against Kevin Macdonald’s meticulous, crisply edited documentary Whitney (2018), a much more interesting watch. That film didn’t have any cringe-inducing dramatisations, nor ominous scenes where she goes swimming or draws a bath. It also explained with more competence what was so special about Houston’s musical talent, one that all those cheesy power ballads did not always serve kindly.

★★☆☆☆

In US cinemas from December 23 and UK cinemas from December 26