‘Whitney,’ a Pop Music Tragedy, Is Sad, Strange and Dismaying
My heart goes out to anybody who arrives at Kevin Macdonald’s new Whitney Houston documentary expecting a celebration of music and once-in-a-generation talent. Those are both present — the songs, that voice. But they’re heavy with cost. They’re warped, enlisted to indict rather than delight. The goose bumps Houston’s singing gives you in “Whitney” are the goose bumps you get anytime you hear her sing. There’s a clip of her, at 19, on “The Merv Griffin Show” doing “Home” from “The Wiz,” and the chills that come are involuntary. Here was a fever you wanted to catch.
