dakjets
I do not know where to begin to tell me about this documentary. Because it is so good in so many ways. This catchy, deep, revealing and thorough documentary about deceased Whitney Houston is really worth a kinobook. Last year, the film, Can I Be Me?, Came as a documentary about her. I liked it too, but nothing beats this!
Most people know Whitney Houston, her fantasy career and cruel destiny. This documentary tells in depth why it went as it went. Unlike Can I Be Me? Has the director received her closest in speech and they speak openly. This gives the film both credibility and impact. The film also manages to put Houston's life and career in a time perspective, which means that one follows this artist through 30 years in the media image. Very interesting. Just go see it!
Desiree
This movie is the worst of filmmaking: it's uninteresting AND it's offensive. You can always see the hand of the filmmaker in any work, but it's especially evident in a documentary. Here you can Tell that Kevin Macdonald, the writer director, has little to no respect for the audience or for Whitney Houston.
He mines her life like a self interested thief continually looking for bits that will sucker punch the audience. He wants people to see this film obviously, and to talk about it. So, he throws in sensationalistic footage of Whitney, for example, negatively critiquing Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson. We are all entitled to dish, and yes somebody filmed it. It seems like somebody was always filming Whitney behind the scenes. But this footage didn't come out under Houston's watch. Not till Macdonald gets the go ahead to mine these films for his work. And of all the footage he found he sticks this in? Why? Apparently because it will make the press and get people to talk about and possibly see the film. Because it certainly adds little to the revelation of Whitney besides the fact that she said she didn't want to sell out. But he could have shown her saying this while leaving the critiques about the two ladies out. Again what does putting it in add to what we know about Whitney? And did Macdonald think at all about the effect showing this would have on the two women in question?
An artist makes decisions about what they will do to others in order to make their work. And this the major problem again and again with this film. Macdonald's hand is careless. And the number one example of this: He lists the death of Bobbi Kristina Brown in the postscript of the film. Most people have heard that she died. But to tack this tidbit to the postscript of a film about her mother's life is base. Avoid this film at all costs. Whitney, you deserved a lot better.
statuskuo
There was a time in American history where every American regardless of race of religion could agree on what good music was. And that was Whitney Houston. A force of music that I am thankful I was of age to fully appreciate.She was a feel good pop force unleashed in the early 80's and tragically passed in 2012.
There is nothing about this movie that tells you anything new that you couldn't have read in some tabloid. Or Wikipedia. But, this is just so entertaining. The same theory I hold for stupid movies like "Pitch Perfect" that ride the coattails of catchy pop from bygone era, Whitney's tune are super addictive. And curiously, none of which she had written herself. She was a singer. Not a musician.
Thru her early days as a gospel singer under the watchful eye of former Aretha Franklin back up singer Cissy Houston, I learned a few new details I never researched back in the day. For instance, it's implied her father John Houston was a questionable New Jersey government employee. Let's say corrupt. Nothing new for Jersey. And that her shot to stardom was so fast, she barely had time to digest her popularity. It's never seen that she appreciated her fans, if not for one sentence...in the entire 2 hours 20 minute expose. The movie isn't...it's pretty superficial but really entertaining. I suspect this was purposefully done by director Kevin MacDonald. The typical tropes are here. "She was fighting her demons" "she trusted the wrong people" What isn't known...despite how much recorded conversation with her, is her own turmoil. You learn so much less about the true pain that haunted her. Only to see that it is rooted in her childhood (nothing new). Or her relationships with her closest family or friends who all seem to point fingers at one another.
Even more curious is an appearance by ex-husband Bobby Brown who squashes any real insight into Whitney's real hard drug or alcohol binges. You hate the bloated idiot now, but...there have been many accounts, he may have been more like everyone else who held onto the fame of Whitney.Blessed with an amazing voice, some are gifted beyond this world. And as her career and life gets yanked from her, it's hard to know when she ever appreciated life. It leaves one with an awful empty feeling, probably the same as Whitney's full life. The cautionary tale you take from this...isn't really effective. It's hard when all we see is natural talent. Born talents don't seem as earned. Perhaps that's how she felt. Also, I find it uneasy that one of the producers on it also happened to be her former film agent (Nicole David). Seems even in death, people still wonder what they can bleed from her.
You also wonder what may have happened had she lived into her 50's. Would she come to terms with her dark past? I'm not sure the makers of this believed she would.
Bertaut
I wasn't a huge fan of Nick Broomfield and Rudi Dolezal's Whitney: Can I Be Me (2017). The film was built on the foundation of never-before-seen backstage footage from Houston's World Tour 1999, but I felt the narrative was poorly constructed, jumping from her divorce from Bobby Brown in 2007 to her death in 2012 with very little detail on what happened in those five years. This had the effect of making the last part of the documentary feel rushed and incomplete. I went into it not knowing a huge amount about Whitney Houston (apart from the obvious bits and pieces that everyone knows), and I came out still not knowing a huge amount about her.Kevin Macdonald's Whitney covers almost identical terrain as Broomfield and Dolezal, with many of the same interviewees appearing in both films, and much of the same factual information presenting itself (Houston tried drugs long before becoming a celebrity; she was criticised as "acting white" and selling out her culture by many black people, and was booed at the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards (where her single "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" was nominated for Best R&B/Urban Contemporary Single - Female"); she was hounded with questions regarding her sexuality for much of her life, etc). One hugely important absence from both films, of course, is Robyn Crawford, Whitney's one time best friend, road manager, and probable lover, who was pretty much the only person in Houston's life who seemed to tell her what was really what, as opposed to what she wanted to hear, and have Houston's best interests at heart. Apart from a beautiful obituary for Esquire (on whose editorial staff Crawford's wife works), Crawford has maintained a dignified silence since Houston died, and neither Broomfield and Dolezal nor Macdonald were able to persuade her to speak on camera. This leaves a sizeable lacuna in the narratives of both films, as it is fairly unlikely anyone will really get to the core of who Houston was until (or indeed if) Crawford decides to tell her own story. As a side note, one interesting figure who didn't appear in Can I Be Me, but who does unexpectedly pop up in Whitney is Clive Davis, president of Arista Records, and the man who signed Houston to her first record deal.For all their similarities, however, I found Macdonald's film superior to Can I Be Me. Whitney has two major, and interconnected, advantages over the earlier film. Can I Be Me is more concerned with facts, and probably covers more "Did you know" moments; for example, the idea to open "I Will Always Love You" capella style was actually Kevin Costner's (however, having said that, Macdonald does manage to squeeze in a couple of not especially well known moments of his own; for example, Houston's haunting rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at the 1991 Super Bowl (where she had her bandleader and arranger Rickey Minor take the radical step of altering the time signature from a 3/4 to a 4/4) was completely unrehearsed, and the revelations regarding Dee Dee Warwick are shocking to say the least). However, what Macdonald does much better than Broomfield and Dolezal is that, on several occasions, he takes time out from the narrative to simply let the audience hear her sing. Probably because of this, his film is considerably more emotive. I was very moved by it on a couple of occasions; I don't remember being moved by Can I Be Me at all. One scene in particular I found very upsetting recalls that horrific scene in Asif Kapadia's Amy (2015) (2015) where Amy Winehouse is performing in Serbia a month before she died. In Whitney, it's footage from her Nothing But Love World Tour 2010, as she tries and completely fails to sing "I Will Always Love You" in Newcastle. The crowd is respectful enough, but given that so much of the documentary is simply about her voice, seeing her like this is very sad, as with her hoarse voice, she can barely stay in tune, let alone hit the high notes, sounding more like someone doing a bad karaoke rendition than one of the greatest singers of all time.Another very well handled part of the documentary's narrative is its coverage of what could be termed "mainstream media complicity" in her suffering. Look, Whitney Houston was a drug addict and a terrible mother, who was indirectly responsible for Bobbi Kristina Brown's death, insofar as she gave her child no stability, and introduced her to a world of substance abuse. Nobody is arguing anything different. But she was also a person, suffering deeply, in public, and very few people did, or even tried to do, anything to help her. The film presents a 2002 sketch from Saturday Night Live (1975) with Maya Rudolph as Whitney, in which she addresses the infamous Diane Sawyer "crack is whack" interview, and a scene from a 2005 episode of American Dad! (2005), in which an emaciated Whitney "sings for crack" in the Smith living-room. These clips were probably funny at the time, but aren't especially funny now, and they serve to highlight one of the most bizarre paradoxes of our celebrity obsessed society; we love to build people up and up and up, but, at some arbitrary point in time, we decide they've become too popular, too successful, too talented, so we do anything to pull them down, and when something goes wrong in their lives, really catastrophically wrong, our response as a society is not empathy, kindness, or understanding, but scorn, derision, and sarcasm. What a strange world we've made.7/10
