The script here seems badly off, in that it's 75 percent introduction and then 25 percent building conflict, and then she sings "I Will Always Love You" at the Grammys and it's over. You still have to tell a coherently structured story – the fact that there are real events doesn't change that. But when you don't choose one of those obvious arcs, you need a structure that explains why you're showing this particular chapter in the person's life.
The same could be said for a marriage: they could certainly have framed the film around the marriage from meeting (or wedding) to breakup (which happened in 2006). The problem with doing biographical work is that the obvious arc in a life is birth to death, and that's usually too much for a movie. It winds up being a strangely paced and somewhat arbitrary chunk taken out of their relationship, poking along for about three-fourths of the running time portraying them as a nearly perfect couple before introducing in the final act the first suggestions that her fame has placed strain on their marriage. Primarily, it's interested in the arc of Houston's relationship with Bobby Brown (played by Arlen Escarpeta), from the time they met until the success of The Bodyguard. It isn't campy and it isn't terrible, and star Yaya DaCosta – who many of us first saw as the runner-up on the third season of America's Next Top Modelyears ago – plays Houston earnestly and credibly, based on the segment of Houston's life, from roughly 1989 to 1994, that the film chooses to focus on. There's a recent history of behind-the-scenes Lifetime movies that have been poorly received, to put it kindly: at Vulture, its Aaliyah biopic was called "a soulless retelling of familiar stories that lacked the ability to communicate whyAaliyah was so important and meant so much to fans." Its Saved By The Belland Brittany Murphy films were treated largely as bad-wig theater. Her directorial debut is Whitney, airing Saturday on Lifetime, which attempts to clear that high bar.
Meanwhile, director Angela Bassett has her own legacy: an Oscar nomination – earned from her relevant experience as the star of the Tina Turner biopic What's Love Got To Do With It?, which made her a star – and appearances in popular movies like Waiting To Exhaleand How Stella Got Her Groove Back, among many others, and now a run on television's American Horror Story.
Her legacy is not curious, and unfortunately, her personal troubles, while enormously sad, aren't on their own surprising. The high bar that a biopic about Whitney Houston has to clear is essentially this: Is it better than just watching YouTube videos of Whitney Houston singing?Does it somehow tell you more, open her up more, explain her legacy more? Because honestly, all it takes is watching her sing to understand why she was as beloved as she was, from her arrival as a 21-year-old phenomenon through her The Bodyguardsuperstardom and the shocking news that she had died the night before the 2012 Grammy Awards.