Angela Bassett
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Connections, in both directions
There are points where Whitney feels a little bit like George Cukor's 1950s version of A Star Is Born, a film whose domestic conversations and confrontations have a bracing chill because the camera keeps its distance and the moments aren't excessively hyped with background music.
There’s also a touch of shorthand in the depiction of Brown, what with the story’s “A Star Is Born”-like aspects as her career soars while his operates on a more mortal plane.
DaCosta and other cast members, including Arlen Escarpeta as Brown and Mark Rolston as music mogul Clive Davis , almost manage to overcome a cliche-ridden script by Shem Bitterman that proves, if nothing else, that he’s seen either George Cukor ’s “What Price Hollywood” or various versions of its spawn, “A Star Is Born.”
Bassett, a strong actress, certainly knows something about depicting the life of a musical artist, scoring an Oscar nomination herself for playing Tina Turner in “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”
It’s also an unsurprising choice for Bassett’s directorial debut, given her breakthrough performance in What’s Love Got To Do With It, one among many music biopics with the unenviable task of adjudicating the degree to which an artist’s personal life and professional accomplishments intersected.
Bassett knows this terrain very well from having acted in the Tina Turner biopic What's Love Got to Do With It? — and probably from having been a celebrity for more than 20 years and getting to know other stars, including Houston, with whom she appeared with in Waiting to Exhale.
At last, Houston is alone onstage, in stunning white, all but inhaling the spotlight as she sings “I Will Always Love You.” It’s a moment of triumph and sadness, just as it is when Barbra Streisand sings “My Man” at the end of William Wyler ’s “Funny Girl” (although that was done in a single take).
Brown naively thinks he’s about to get his own contract, but, instead, Davis wants him to use his influence to get Houston on the road to promote the soundtrack to her first film role, “The Bodyguard,” with its hit cover of Dolly Parton ’s “I Will Always Love You.”
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Whitney’s final acting role was in a similar music-biz story, 2012’s Sparkle ; Lifetime cranked out a chintzy biopic, Whitney , in 2015.
Meanwhile, director Angela Bassett has her own legacy: an Oscar nomination – earned from her relevant experience as the star of the Tina Turner biopic What's Love Got To Do With It?, which made her a star – and appearances in popular movies like Waiting To Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, among many others, and now a run on television's American Horror Story.
Bassett knows this terrain very well from having acted in the Tina Turner biopic What's Love Got to Do With It? — and probably from having been a celebrity for more than 20 years and getting to know other stars, including Houston, with whom she appeared with in Waiting to Exhale.