JASON EVANS' 100-WORD REVIEWS: I Wanna Dance With Somebody

 Has The Voice But Not The Story

Film critic Jason Evans is here to tell you everything you need to know about movies that are so brief and to the point, you could read them in less time than it takes to belt out the chorus of your favorite song. His reviews are exactly 100 words long (99 is too few and 101 is too much). Here is his 100-word review of I Wanna Dance With Somebody.

The Premise: An authorized biography of the life of singing superstar Whitney Houston (Naomi Ackie). This film tracks her rise to stardom and her many troubles once getting there with bad relationships, poor financial management, and the drugs that eventually took her life. The film is directed by Kasi Lemmons, who made the acclaimed biopic Harriet in 2019. The cast includes Stanley Tucci as famed record producer Clive Davis. The film has a run time of almost 2 and a half hours.

The 100 Words: Though the music** is magical, the script and direction here are a total mess. Houston’s life was full of struggles, but this film sets up each one of them and then dispenses with it so quickly we don’t get much of a sense of the drama or the impact. Everything is so paper thin, it feels like what an 8th grade biography would say about Whitney. Ackie gives it her all and the staging of the many numbers are first rate, but eventually even the music gets tiresome as we plod along. Whitney deserves much better than this simplistic mess.

**- The singing in the film is done through original recordings of Houston. There are a couple moments where Ackie uses her own voice, but all the big musical numbers are Whitney’s inimitable voice.

Reach out to Jason Evans on Twitter @JasonDukeEvans