Whitney: Film Review

Whitney paints portrait of a victim, not an icon.

For those of you thinking “Didn’t I just read a review of a Whitney Houston documentary?” – you’re not wrong. Nick Broomfield’s Whitney: Can I Be Me came out last year, and a year before that there had been a Lifetime movie. So what can director Kevin Macdonald bring to this well-excavated story?

Experience, for one thing. Known for his feature films like The Last King Of Scotland, he’s also made several music documentaries, exploring the lives and careers of Mick Jagger, Oasis and Bob Marley. It’s perhaps this pedigree that allowed him incredible access to Houston’s family and friends, including her brothers, her mother, and her ex-husband Bobby Brown. The latter is perhaps a mistake, as Brown is a reticent interviewee, and his domestic violence and drug use is glossed over.

Some of these interviews are shocking, as it’s revealed that Houston was introduced to drugs in her teens by her brothers; that her family deliberately tried to end the bisexual singer’s relationship with Robyn Crawford; and the most devastating, that Houston was sexually abused as a child by her cousin, the singer Dee Dee Warwick.

But Macdonald never seems to do much with these pieces of information, which leads to a larger problem. By only portraying Whitney Houston through the perceptions of others, he robs her of any agency. Houston’s dedication, ambition and talent is attributed to her mother’s dedicated training. Her romances are depicted as Houston always being pursued, though one friend acknowledges how much she loved sex. Fans talk of her iconic rendition of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and how it aimed to empower black Americans, but her musical director Rickey Minor gets the credit. Even her sexuality is erroneously and homophobically attributed to the sexual abuse she suffered.

By rushing through Whitney Houston’s success and legacy with merely a montage of greatest hits before lingering on her struggles, Macdonald fails to portray Houston as a person before he paints her as a victim. It’s an engaging, shocking and saddening documentary – but doesn’t Whitney Houston’s body of work deserve more celebration?

3 / 5

Out now.