[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
There are pop icons for whom your age is a specific gating factor in terms of how you remember them. For me, as a child of the 80s, Whitney Houston was “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me),” which was released my junior year in high school. For folks younger than me, she was iconic for her version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” When we lost her in 2012, barely three years after Michael Jackson, her death resonated, like his, as much for losing her so early as for the loss of her career in the preceding years. Houston had her share of the drama, and this weekend, Lifetime takes a peek inside that with Whitney, an exploration of her life from the moment she met Bobby Brown until the end of their marriage.
It’s an interesting framing device for a biopic because it skips right past her ascent and avoids her death, beginning in 1989 when she was already a massive star–it does, however dive right into the idea that her addictions were already beginning when she met Brown and together, they were just toxic for each other. Directed by Angela Bassett, who co-starred with Houston in Waiting to Exhale in 1995, the film tells Houston’s story in a fairly straightforward manner, interspersed with the musical numbers that made her famous.
As with any “based on a true story” adaptation, you have to decide what you believe. The fact that Bassett put her name on it indicates that we can trust a lot of it, but a considerable amount of the film is private conversations between Brown and Houston, and Brown is not credited as a collaborator on the source material. Instead, the script was culled from hours of interviews with Houston’s friends. The coda doesn’t mention how she died, instead focusing on her professional legacy as a bestselling artist.
Whether you loved her or not, whether she was a touchstone in your adolescence or adulthood, it’s an interesting peek behind the curtain. It’s also a revealing time capsule about a moment in the history of pop stardom when someone could be a massive media presence even before cell phones and the Internet documented every single moment of the rich and famous.
Yaya DaCosta (Lee Daniels’ The Butler) headlines as Houston, and she’s very good. Arlen Escarpeta (Into the Storm) is solid as Brown, giving him a deeper layer that will likely surprise fans who were only aware of him for the negatives. Deborah Cox voices the Houston songs used in the film.
Whitney premieres Saturday night on Lifetime at 8/7c and runs throughout the month. Here’s a preview and interview with Angela Bassett:
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