Producers: Denis O’Sullivan, Jeff Kalligheri, Anthony McCarten, Pat Houston, Clive Davis, Larry Mestel, Molly Smith, Thad Luckinbill, Matt Jackson, Christina Papagjika and Matthew Salloway   Director: Kasi Lemmons   Screenplay: Anthony McCarten   Cast: Naomi Ackie, Stanley Tucci, Tamara Tunie, Nafessa Williams, Clarke Peters Bria Danielle Singleton and Ashton Sanders    Distributor: Sony/TriStar

Grade: C

Whitney Houston has received biographical treatment on screen before–most notably in Angela Bassett’s 2015 LifeTime film and Kenneth Macdonald’s 2018 documentary.  What distinguishes Kasi Lemmon’s new biopic more than anything else is the proliferation of musical numbers, most of them made up of Houston’s own tracks refurbished for auditorium sound systems (and played, it might be added, at high volume).  Otherwise “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” hits on the major points in Houston’s career in fairly standard fashion, emphasizing the high ones and not neglecting the low ones, although it treats the latter in somewhat sanitized fashion.  What most characterizes it—unsurprisingly, given some of the names among the producers–is the title of last year’s Aretha Franklin biography: “Respect.”

One emphasis of the story that might surprise (and antagonize) some viewers is Houston’s deep friendship with Robyn Crawford, the young woman whom she met as a high schooler and to whom she remained close (to the discomfort of her family) for many years.  The film begins with their initial meeting, and though Naomi Ackie (as Houston) and Nafessa Williams (as Crawford) are rather too old to be believable as teens, their scenes together later have a ring of authenticity, even if one, in which Crawford wrecks an apartment, even attacking a vacuum cleaner, in response to what she perceives as a slight, is a fairly typical genre cliché.  (Of course the relationship was already treated, in fictionalized form, in Andrew Dosunmu’s Netflix film “Beauty” earlier this year.)

Otherwise the film follows a pretty predictable template.  There’s the pushiness of Houston’s mother Cissy (Tamara Tunie), a singer herself, who recognizes her daughter’s extraordinary talent and manipulates her first solo appearance for record executive Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci), who immediately takes her on and helps her become an immediate sensation.  There’s the venality of her philandering father John (Clarke Peters), a super-controlling type who robbed his daughter as her manager and still wanted more.  And there’s the disaster of her marriage to singer Bobby Brown (Aston Sanders), whose brazen mistreatment and infidelity she for some reason endured from the very start. But like her relationship with Crawford, the misbegotten union with Brown is evidence that the subtitled song is correct–Houston always needed a partner for emotional support.

Some attention is given to Houston’s film work, most notably her first picture “The Bodyguard,” the sequence about which includes some cheeky remarks about Kevin Costner, as well as one clip of him from the final product.  But the emphasis is on her singing, and there are extended recreations of some of her most memorable appearances, including her television debut on the Merv Griffin Show, the rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner” at Super Bowl XXV in 1991 and, as a summation, her three-part number at the 1994 American Music Awards, all presented glitzily by production designer Gerald Sullivan, costumer Charlese Antoinette Jones and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd.  In fact, though the film doesn’t ignore her unraveling on tour in the later years or her drug use, it uses that last appearance as a triumphant summation at the close, relegating the unhappy circumstances of her death to a muted caption.

Ackie does an excellent job of recreating all those numbers, capturing Houston’s stage persona and convincingly lip-synching to her tracks.  (It would have been better, though, for editor Daysha Broadway to have cut some of the shots of adoring audiences, or of friends and family member jumping in glee while watching her on television; they probably add a good five minutes to the bloated two-and-a-half hour running-time.) Ackie is also dramatically effective, though occasionally histrionically over-the-top, the true diva.  The major supporting players—Williams, Tunie, Peters, Ashton—are fine even if their characters remain on a single note throughout.  Tucci portrays Davis as what must be the most saintly record producer ever put on film; he has as many reaction shots as cute dogs do in a lot of movies, in most of which his slight smile has a cherubic feel, and the late-film revelation that he’s gay is treated playfully.  Of course, Davis is among the producers, so the depiction is explicable.

If you just want to hear lots of Houston’s music presented in auditorium sound, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” will do the trick; it’s rather like a Wikipedia article with a soundtrack.  But if you’re looking for a more serious examination of her life, Macdonald’s excellent documentary is the better bet.

Producers: Jeremy Dawson, Ari Handel and Darren Aronofsky   Director: Darren Aronofsky   Screenplay: Samuel D. Hunter   Cast: Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Ty Simpkins, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton and Sathya Sridharan   Distributor: A24 Films

Grade: C

Brendan Fraser is getting fulsome praise for his affecting performance while encased in a prodigious fat suit in Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale.”  He brings pathos and sweetness to his character despite the unwieldy prosthetics designed by Adrien Morot; it’s his best work since “Gods and Monsters.”

Unfortunately the film suffers from an equally cumbersome impediment it proves unable to overcome—the theatrical excesses and claustrophobic staginess of Samuel D. Hunter’s script, which he adapted from his own unaccountably well-received 2012 play.  This is an instance when one can appreciate an actor’s accomplishment while acknowledging that the vehicle to which he’s contributing isn’t worthy of his talent.

Charlie (Fraser) is a morbidly obese man living in a small apartment in Moscow, Idaho.  He’s literally eating himself to death: according to his friend Liz (Hong Chau), a nurse who comes by daily to look in on him, he’s suffering from congenital heart disease and will soon die unless he curtails his unhealthy practices.  Yet she realizes the futility of her entreaties, even bringing him the huge sandwiches he wolfs down.  He also orders pizza and rifles through the kitchen drawers for candy bars.  Though every attempt to rise from the recliner and lurch to the hallway on his walker is a terrible struggle, he continues to eat prodigiously.

His backstory emerges fairly quickly.  He’s a writing teacher, though now he works exclusively online, instructing small classes via Zoom from home; he tells them that the camera on his laptop is broken, though actually he’s disconnected it to hide his appearance.  His binge eating began after the death of his partner Adam, Liz’s brother, for whom he left his wife Mary (Samantha Morton) and daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) years ago.

The time frame of the action is from Monday to Friday of a week that’s stormy in terms of the weather as well as the dramatics in Charlie’s apartment.  He is himself in distress, repeatedly poring over a brief essay on “Moby Dick” that obviously has special meaning for him.  He has a few regular visitors–Liz, who delivers an extra-sized wheelchair he hoists himself into, the pizza delivery man (Sathya Sridharan) he always instructs to leave the order at the door, leaving payment in the mailbox, and a bird for which he puts crumbs on the windowsill.

But there are several unanticipated intruders.  The first is Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a young missionary from a local church.  He’s come to Idaho from Iowa, for reasons that will be spelled out laboriously over the course of the drama, and repeatedly returns although Charlie makes clear that he’s not interested in his message.  In the process he’ll become involved with Charlie’s two other unexpected visitors: his daughter, who’s furious with him for having abandoned her—and with the world in general—and his equally angry wife, who’s upset with the fact that Ellie and he are in contact again and harbors unceasing hostility for his having left her for Adam in the first place.

The portrait that Hunter and Aronofsky are drawing of Charlie is ostensibly a sympathetic one, and Fraser, with his haunted look of longing and sorrow, makes it impossible for a viewer not to empathize with the character, especially when the other actors are all encouraged to overemote, as though they were playing to the furthest recesses of the second balcony; as surly Ellie, Sink gives a high-pitched, one-note performance that comes off as especially shrill, but the usually reliable Morton isn’t far behind, and Simpkins overdoes the naive earnestness.

But the problems of “The Whale” aren’t limited to the histrionics; the play’s construction is deeply flawed.  Despite the desire to endear Charlie to us, and identify him as a figure straining for personal redemption even as his heart is failing him, he remains, despite all Fraser’s efforts, a self-destructive figure who’s also a self-loathing man.  (It’s easy to see why some have criticized the play and film for indulging in the very fatphobic attitudes it ostensibly rejects.  The heavy-handed allusions to Melville are another difficulty.) 

And structurally the piece is a shambles, dependent on that hoariest of theatrical devices, the pounding on the door that invariably occurs whenever a dramatic highpoint is being reached in a conversation.  The cliché happens so often that you might think yourself in a reverse version of a French bedroom farce with its comically slamming doors, or a TV soap opera where the imminent revelation of some dark secret is suddenly interrupted by the ringing of a telephone.  On the stage such things can be tolerated; on the screen they quickly grow absurd.  Matters aren’t helped by the inability of Aronofsky and his collaborators—production designers Mark Friedberg and Robert Pyzocha, cinematographer Matthew Libatique and editor Andrew Weisblum—to “open up” the action to any appreciable degree.  The camera roves around the apartment, but inevitably close-ups predominate, and given the overacting, they’re often not attractive.  Nor does Rob Simonson’s emphatic score help matters.

The catalyst for the tragedy of Adam’s death and Charlie’s self-destructive grief, moreover, is a target that may have resonance for Hunter, but in this context seems all too easy: religious fundamentalism.  Adam’s suicidal decisions, it’s revealed, were a reaction to condemnation from his father, a church leader, of his life-style, and Charlie’s eating disorder was in turn a reaction to his loss.  (Thomas’ tribulations also stem from this source.)  Thus the culpability for all the pain lies in religious intolerance.  In this connection one might note one change from play to film.  In the stage version, Thomas was a Mormon missionary; here he’s a member of an evangelical sect—unnamed, but given the setting most probably the notorious so-called Christian Reconstruction movement centered in Moscow.  One can understand the alteration, of course.  The LDS was a pretty good sport about “The Book of Mormon,” even taking out ads in its playbills, because that was fairly easy when the treatment was a good-natured spoof.  One expects the situation would be rather different if Mormonism were charged explicitly as a cause of suicide.

The performance of Brendan Fraser—graceful despite the prosthetic encumbrances—is a reason to consider seeing “The Whale.”  But despite his admirable work, the film itself sinks.