Whit­ney – first look review

No, that isn’t a typo. Just over a year on since Nick Broom­field deliv­ered his rather ropey Whit­ney: Can I Be Me, Kevin Mac­Don­ald returns with anoth­er pro­file of the late gospel singer turned glob­al pop phe­nom­e­non, Whit­ney Hous­ton. Yet where both films are cars trav­el­ling to rough­ly the same tor­rid des­ti­na­tion, Mac­Don­ald is at the wheel of a Rolls Royce where Broom­field sham­bles along in a Nis­san Micra.

It might feel wrong to com­pare the two, but while they’re essen­tial­ly sim­i­lar films which revis­it the dra­mat­ic saga of Whitney’s life and death, this new one man­ages to do so with­out mak­ing it too obvi­ous that it’s push­ing a the­sis or des­per­ate­ly attempt­ing to uncov­er a con­ceit­ed new angle as to why the subject’s life went so spec­tac­u­lar­ly off the rails.

This film aspires to reframe Whitney’s sto­ry as a unique­ly Amer­i­can tale. Mon­tages made up glossy adver­tise­ments for junk food, sport­ing events, white goods and oth­er ​’80s cul­tur­al detri­tus are used as a short­hand to con­nect the star to a soci­ety vora­cious to con­sume any­thing and every­thing that came its way. Frankly, it feels like a cheap device which skews the focus away from the far more inter­est­ing mat­ter of Whitney’s career, her pri­vate life and the self-serv­ing mem­bers of her extreme­ly weird extend­ed family.

“Nip­py”, as she was known, was bred for suc­cess by her insis­tent, pos­si­bly over­bear­ing moth­er Cis­sy, who had achieved mod­er­ate suc­cess her­self as a back­ing singer for the likes of Aretha Franklin and Elvis. In 1984 Whit­ney nailed her debut TV per­for­mance on the Merv Grif­fin Show and was duly cat­a­pult­ed into the stratos­phere, even though her slick­ly-pro­duced brand of RnB-inflect­ed dance pop was lat­er cooly received by mem­bers of the black music fraternity.

Then it was are­na tours, albums, film appear­ances, chat shows, pho­to shoots and more cash than she could ever spend in her life­time (although not more than the mem­bers of her fam­i­ly could burn through). She suf­fers through a ruinous mar­riage to Bob­by Brown, who appears here as an inter­vie­wee though offers noth­ing of real val­ue as he blankly refus­es to dis­cuss the pos­si­ble caus­es of Whitney’s demise. There’s also the pub­lic indig­ni­ty of being sued by her own father which led her to seek solace in drugs, a habit which she was nev­er tru­ly able to shake.

For­mal­ly, the film isn’t offer­ing any­thing new, and if you’re just here to enjoy the music, then maybe best stick to the records or a YouTube playlist. Yet even though it has been endorsed by the Hous­ton fam­i­ly, it still man­ages to head to some extreme­ly dark ter­rain, and there are rev­e­la­tions here which empha­sise the extent of Whitney’s deep-seat­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ment and sug­gest that, as a per­son able to cloak her sad­ness, she was as great an actor as she was a singer.

All told it’s anoth­er solid­ly con­struct­ed doc pro­file whose very nature leads it to milk the inher­ent tragedy of a celebri­ty who checked out ahead of time. Despite its insid­er endorse­ments, Mac­Don­ald gives mem­bers of the fam­i­ly enough rope with which to hang them­selves, and he does, thank­ful­ly, try to allow the mate­r­i­al to speak for itself rather than push Nation­al Enquir­er-style crack­pot theories.

The one miss­ing link here (also miss­ing from Broomfield’s film, but more of a focus), is Whitney’s friend, con­fi­dante and rumoured lover, Robyn Craw­ford. If she ever decides to come for­ward and spill all, it seems like there could very well be anoth­er Whit­ney movie in the offing.