“I Wanna Dance with Somebody” suffers from thin dialogue and predictability — dull trappings intrinsic to biopics. Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston in "I Wanna Dance with Somebody." To wit: Whitney Houston was a Black woman — ate Black, slept Black, lived Black, cried Black, walked Black and died Black. The most peculiar aspect of this criticism is the fact that nearly all American music is Black music. While Houston has mostly elided criticism that she wasn’t Black enough or didn’t make Black music, the spirit of this indictment lives on today.

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