Whitney (2015)

Too much of everything

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

I know this is a late review, as i see that this movie aired a few years ago, I actually liked the movie as far as entertainment purposes. It does seem according to this bi-opic, Whitney was already heavy into drug use. Bobbie Brown was completely innocent of any wrong doing...smh Umm yeah right! Did Bobbie have anything to do with the production of this movie? He comes out smelling like a rose and looking like a dutiful husband. Whitney had an amazing talent that very few are ever close to being born with. Bobbie Brown however he came to be, was nowhere close to her range. I never did get the attraction as far as talent was concerned. I feel like he was a huge part of her demise. Bobbie rode her coattails to popularity and stardom. I was truly saddened by her downfall and her untimely death. Truly a sad ending indeed. Not to mention the death of her young daughter following right after hers. With that all said and done, I thought that the young, beautiful newcomer Yaya Decosta did a phenomenal job portraying larger than life Whitney, especially the onstage performances. She captured her pretty well. If she keeps it up, I am sure we will see a lot more of her in the future...

Honestly,I would had given this movie an higher rating because even though I was angry about it portraying Whitney as the drug user and not Bobby, the acting was in my opinion superb. I was even more disgusted with this movie after seeing "The "New Edition" movie, which clearly shows Bobby using cocaine way before Whitney,which I somewhat figured. Unlike the "Whitney" movie, The "New Edition" movie was told by the men themselves wasn't no second guessing, which makes their story,the true story, this is why I only gave the "Whitney" movie a 5, because Whitney was superstar and the movie did not do her justice at all, in fact it damaged her image even more.

I have to say the actors were really good but it's not the real Whitney we are seeing here. I don't think in my opinion, Yaya DaCosta shouldn't have been doing the singing part. She's a great actress and she's honestly beautiful, she's still not Whitney Houston. Musicals = 120% Acting as a music icon = no sorry, she is really acting as herself yall.As for Arlen Escarpeta playing Bobby Brown, he sounds more of Usher then the real Bobby. Nor he didn't give much character into who Bobby Brown actually is. He also is good actor but he hasn't proved to me that he can do Bobby. Anyways no one can be like Whitney or Bobby.It's a good idea to make a movie about them, however, no actor in this world can play these stars to be the queen and king of RNB through history.

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.