Nice Tribute to Whitney but it's About Bobby.

StepsCheerBSB

As a child of the 80's, I grew up when Whitney Houston was at the top of her game, so its nice to see a film about her life. To begin, Yaya DaCosta did a great job portraying Whitney. From what I remember about Whitney, Yaya captured her mannerisms quite well.

Here are a few things I would have liked to have seen in the film: Timelines/subtitles notifying the viewer which year these events occurred and the story focusing more on Whitney and less on her marriage.

This film roughly covers the years between 1989 and 1994/1995. Again, I was young when all of these events happened in real life but putting the year at the bottom of the screen could have made everything clearer because how I thought things happened (like them getting married and her miscarriage/The Bodyguard) took place in a different order than what was shown on screen. Plus, it didn't help that Yaya had a different wig on in every other scene so it was difficult to follow the sequence.

Since this film was an hour and a half, this film could have explored more into her life growing up. I would have loved to have seen her as a child, whether it was if she went on tour with her mom (since her mom sang backup for Elvis), when/how she got discovered, her modeling days, was being in the music industry what caused her to start with the drug use or were the rumors true about her brother introducing her to drugs? Wasn't she in a group with Johnny Gill, and why that didn't work out? Did she ever go to rehab? What made her finally decide to divorce Bobby? This list can keep going but the movie is mainly focused on her relationship with Bobby to the point it should have been titled "Whitney and Bobby."

I know the family disapproved of this movie, but I didn't learn anything new about Whitney that the media didn't already cover years ago. I mean, I learned more about Bobby than Whitney. I saw Bobby talk about him growing up in the hood, plus his friend gets shot in a scene, his infidelities, him having two kids prior to their marriage with another on the way from different women, his insecurities about being Mr. Houston and him being stagnant while Whitney was on tour. Granted, there was limited insight due to the families disapproval and Whitney not being alive but there are several resources that could have added more to the story line. More research could have taken this film to the next level.

All in all, I loved the music, Deborah Cox did the singing for Whitney's performances. The intensity between the actors was great, the costume designs signified the era well. In the end, go into this film with the mindset that you'll probably learn more about Bobby than Whitney.

score 7/10

StepsCheerBSB 19 January 2015

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3165767/