An average movie

To be honest, after watching Kevin Macdonald’s solid documentary, I don’t think I really needed to watch another movie about Whitney Houston but, since this one was directed by Kasi Lemmons, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, first of all, even though Naomi Ackie was/still is quite gorgeous, I thought she was rather miscast here. I mean, she did give a solid performance but, I’m sorry, she didn’t look like Whitney Houston at all. Yaya DaCosta, who was cast in the really poorly received Lifetime movie ‘Whitney’, did seem to be a better choice. Considering the movie itself, they really wanted to show like everything including all the highlights and lows during her career, resulting in a whopping running time of around 2.5 hrs. It wasn’t necessarily a bad idea but, unfortunately, the end-result did feel really scattered after all. The most surprising thing was how much time and attention they gave to her relationship with Robyn Crawford. Indeed, Houston was or might have been a lesbian or bisexual which was something I didn’t really know at all. However, the way this relationship was handled was rather clunky after all. I mean, at first, she seemed to be madly in love with Robyn who then became jealous because Houston was involved romantically with some men. Then, it seemed to become an open relationship and, then, suddenly, the whole lesbian angle was completely dropped once she met Bobby Brown, even if Robyn was still an important part of her life many years after that. Basically, they went for the long rumour about Whitney Houston being a closet lesbian which was interesting but their approach was just really awkward and it actually never really worked. And that was just one specific aspect of her life which was rather poorly developed. Indeed, they also threw in the mix pretty much anything which might have had a negative influence on her life like her mother, her father, her religious upbringing, the fact that she was considered to be too ‘white’, her relationship with Bobby Brown and, of course, the drugs. However, it felt all over the map and none of it was really properly developed. At the end of the day, the conclusion was that, even though Whitney Houston was quite gorgeous and apparently extremely talented, she seemed to be yet another super star who never really managed to handle this kind of life. To be honest, even though she might have been one of the best singers ever, after watching this documentary and this movie, she didn’t seem to be a really interesting person after all. Anyway, in spite these flaws, it was still a decent watch though.