'Whitney': A Diva, Deconstructed

What is left to say about the spectacular rise and agonizing fall of Whitney Houston, whose drug-fueled decline played out in such full public view that it's hard to imagine any biopic rising above tabloid cliché? Give or take a few new tidbits about the pop superstar's childhood scars and fluid sexuality, Scottish director Kevin Macdonald's absorbing documentary Whitney doesn't break with the sad blueprint that frames rock docs by the handful.

How could it? 's path to ruin plays out. Like her British counterpart, Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston was a charismatic, terrifyingly fragile soul who came from a close but troubled family. In adulthood, she chose the wrong man to cling to like a limpet when her career eclipsed his and he took it badly. (Yes, Bobby Brown shows up on camera to insist that drugs had to do with his former wife's life or her death.) She struggled with, but mostly denied and indulged her drug habit until it was too late. Like Winehouse, too, she succumbed just when, having hit rock bottom, it seemed she had finally gotten her life back together.