Whitney
A documentary that answers more questions than I knew I had about Whitney Houston’s life, from her religious upbringing to how she was groomed by her musical family, and from her meteoric rise to the top of the charts to her spectacularly sad struggle with drugs—a struggle that, unfortunately, overlapped with parenthood. It’s a lot, and Whitney’s two-hour runtime can feel padded with superfluous info and context, even when it doesn’t have a ton to do with its subject. (Sit down, Berlin Wall!) The real meat is found in the extensive, heartfelt interviews with Houston’s family members, including the evil enabler Bobby Brown (boo, hiss), as well as touching, never-before-seen footage of Houston herself, being very human.
by Elinor Jones