Beauty

Lena Waite TV/Movie projects are usually well constructed with exceptional direction, timing and great dialogue but this movie takes the viewer into several sporadic directions down a rabbit hole.

Who's idea was it to not have her ever sing. Instead rely of real vintage footage at filler. Lazy filmmaking by the director/producer. What a disappointment, not only to viewers but to the great seasoned actors who put their faith on the script. Someone was overconfident. I feel for all the actors and the writer, because the flop is nowhere near their fault. I kept hoping we'd have her big shining moment. Just once, and the world stays quiet while she sings. I guess they thought they could get away with it being an artistic choice, but it failed miserably. Too bad.

Anyone who says this isn't a Whitney esq bio clearly is unaware of the Whitney story out of the mainstream. It feels like Lena was trying to attempt a quentin tarantino thing ... like he did with Once upon a time in Hollywood, giving us a truthful story with a fictional twist.

I can also understand a viewers aversion to the no singing approach. Which again was a stylistic choice, in a way to show us other singers and the culture of the time and how that in tow was her voice. The influences.

And the direction has a theatrical theme but never goes deep enough into the characters to ever engage with them, feel them and therefor care for them.

But what I struggled with most is... how is this from the same writer that gave us Queen and Slim!!!!!

A movie about a young singer you actually never hear sing. I found it boring as you never to really know the characters or feel sympathy for any of them. Don't waste your time watch something else.

What is a music film about a singer where the principal character NEVER SINGS? Very sporadic, choppy, misdirected piece that never fully invests in the characters, no development of any kind, no idea of the trials and tribulations that made her what built up. A bunch of ra ra hype with absolutely no hype. What was the point? Where did this all come from? The saddest thing is the comparisons with Whitney Houstons story, the tight Christian Family, a hidden addiction problem, a secret lesbian affair, an eventual bad boy intervention. Waste of Giancarlo, Nicey, Sharon, the young talent smh. When there are so many great scripts and talent not cultivated in the movie industry yet waste of films like this can be greenlighted? There's a mad problem!