Michael's Movie Grade: B
A quite moving, if flawed, biopic of Whitney Houston.
What really makes this movie work so well is the wonderfully heartfelt performance by Naomi Ackie. She does a wonderful job of playing Whitney from her 20's to her 40's. At each of these ages, she feels completely natural and believable. This is no easy feat, and it is incredibly how well this young actress pulls it off. She also does a wonderful job of pulling you the emotion of every scene. Many of the emotional scenes here work so well because of her performance. While she messes up and hurts people, the way she plays this role makes the only natural reaction to want to give her a hug. This film in general does a wonderful job of having you deeply care about Whitney, while still showing her human faults. It is painful to watch her hurting and feel like she has no one who truly cares about her. You can see people who truly care about her but at the same time see her trust people who do not have her best interest at heart. This can become hard to watch but it only increases how emotionally effective the film is.
The most obvious praise for this movie is the music. There is a reason Whitney Houston's music has been so greatly praised and why there are so many fans of her music. It is simply wonderful music and her voice was simply incredible. Luckily the filmmakers realized how incredible her voice was and knew to use Whitney's own voice on the soundtrack. The selection of music used here (ranging from her greatest hits to lesser-known songs by her) is simply wonderful and I am sure many who see this will leave fans of her music, even if they previously haven't really listened to it. Though the soundtrack is Whitney, Naomi Ackie does an incredible job of making you believe you are actually watching her perform the songs. During these scenes you can swear that you are watching an actual Whitney Houston performance.
This movie has the same major fault that many biopics do. That is that it tries to do more than can be done in one movie. This film tries to cover multiple decades of her life and do so in a way that covers many aspects of her life. Even though this isn't a short movie, this results in a pretty rushed movie. Often times it feels like it can jump from one idea to another with no warning. This often feels abrupt and jarring. The worst cases of this are when after an emotional scene, it quickly switches focus, without giving us time to full take in the emotion of what we just saw. This can take away from scenes that should be even more emotional effective. It can also sometimes give this movie a bit of an unfocused feel.
This may not be a perfect movie, but everything that works here works very well.
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