Tamara Tunie Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,’ starring Naomi Ackie, Stanley Tucci, Ashton Sanders, Tamara Tunie, Nafessa Williams and Clarke Peters

December 21, 2022

by Carla Hay

“Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody”

Directed by Kasi Lemmons

Culture Representation: Taking place from 1983 to 2012, in various parts of the world, the dramatic film “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” features a cast of African American and white characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Entertainment superstar Whitney Houston has struggles with her public image, her sexuality, fame, drugs, her parents and a volatile marriage to singer Bobby Brown.

Culture Audience: Besides appealing to the obvious target audience of Whitney Houston fans, “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” will appeal primarily to people who want to see music-video-styled recreations of her life and relatively tame depictions of her biggest public scandals.

Nafessa Williams and Naomi Ackie in “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” (Photo by Emily Aragones/TriStar Pictures)

At times, “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” looks more like a cliché checklist of the legendary diva’s high points and low points instead of being an insightful biopic. However, the cast members’ performances, led by a dynamic Naomi Ackie, elevate this uneven movie. The recreations of some of Whitney Houston’s most beloved performances and music videos are among the highlights of this biopic, which sometimes gets dragged down by corny dialogue and tedious pacing.

Directed by Kasi Lemmons and written by Anthony McCarten, “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is a movie sanctioned by the Whitney Houston estate, which is overseen by her sister-in-law Pat, who is one of the movie’s producers. Whitney Houston—who died at age 48 in 2012, of a drug-related drowning in a Beverly Hills hotel bathtub—has been the subject of some tell-all documentaries and books since her death. Therefore, the only people who might be surprised by what’s in “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” are those who don’t know what’s already been revealed in these tell-all stories or in the tabloid media.

That’s why everything in “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” feels like a retread with nothing fresh or innovative to offer in telling Whitney’s story. However, the movie delivers in its intention to be a nostalgia trip for her music and in doing faithful and meticulous staging of many of Whitney’s iconic moments. This is a movie made for fans who don’t want to see anything too shocking or too unflattering about Whitney.

Ackie’s performance as Whitney admirably captures some of the magic of this entertainment superstar. However, this depiction of Whitney never looks like a true embodiment but more like a better-than-average imitation. Some of Ackie’s real singing is in the movie, but the majority of Whitney’s singing in the movie consists of the real Whitney’s recordings. (And wisely so, since no one can completely duplicate Whitney’s extraordinary vocal talent and style.) Ackie, who is British in real life, also does a credible but not outstanding imitation of Whitney’s speaking voice.

Because this movie does not aspire to be prestigious, award-winning art, “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” serves its purpose in delivering Whitney’s hits as a soundtrack to the portrayal of her life’s melodrama. Much of the real-life raunchiness and decadence are toned down to make her story more appealing to audiences of wide age ranges. The movie never takes the time to understand Whitney’s inner thoughts, but instead gives viewers plenty of behind-the-scenes drama that was already exposed years ago.

There are some touches of comedy that generally work well to lighten the mood. But sometimes, “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” tries too hard to gloss over much of her emotional pain. Anything truly depressing in her life (which might have contributed to her drug addiction) is never fully examined, because the movie then jumps back into showing another Whitney performance. In other words, these are surface-level portrayals of Whitney’s problems.

For example, the 1991 miscarriage that Whitney had while filming the 1992 film “The Bodyguard” (her feature-film debut, which spawned the blockbuster soundtrack of the same name) gets less than two minutes of screen time. It breezes by with a scene of Whitney being comforted on a hospital bed by then-fiancé Bobby Brown (played by Ashton Sanders), with him telling her they can have other children in the future. And the miscarriage is never mentioned again. In real life, according to several people who knew Whitney and talked about her in interviews, this miscarriage had a profound and traumatic effect on her, but you’d never know it from watching this movie.

“Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” screenwriter McCarten also wrote the divisive screenplay for “Bohemian Rhapsody” (the Oscar-winning 2018 biopic of British rock band Queen), which got a lot of criticism for jumbling the band’s timeline too much and fabricating important details. “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” doesn’t have those problems, since the movie sticks to the basic, well-known facts of Whitney’s life. The film’s tweaks to Whitney’s life timeline are minor and do not significantly rewrite factual history. The movie shows a good balance of Whitney in the recording studio and on stage, but the depictions of how she deals with her personal problems are often reduced to soundbites.

“Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” (which takes place from 1983 to 2012) is told mostly in chronological order, except for the movie opening with the introduction to her performance at the 1994 American Music Awards. It’s a scene that the movie circles back to at the end of the film, which concludes in a somewhat long, drawn-out and awkward way: Her entire medley performance (of “I Loves You, Porgy,” “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” and “I Have Nothing”) is recreated on screen when the end credits should have already been rolling.

The movie depicts Whitney’s rise to stardom, beginning in 1983, when she was 19 or 20 years old and a backup vocalist for her gospel singer mother Cissy Houston (played by Tamara Tunie), who had a great deal of influence on Whitney as a singer. Cissy is portrayed as loving but also very strong-willed and domineering with Whitney. As a performer, Cissy was well-known but not rich by any stretch of the imagination.

Cissy’s headlining status was mostly at large nightclubs and small theaters. And even though Whitney’s cousin is Dionne Warwick, Whitney’s godmother was Aretha Franklin, and the Houston family mingled with showbiz royalty, Whitney grew up in a middle-class home in the New Jersey cities of Newark and East Orange. Cissy often spent a lot of time away from home as a touring artist to pay the family’s bills. Cissy’s then-husband John Houston (played by Clarke Peters) was also Cissy’s manager. Like many famous divas, Whitney’s first manager was also her father.

As shown and told repeatedly in the movie, Cissy and John (who would eventually divorce in 1990, after 31 years of marriage) frequently argued because John expected Cissy to be a more attentive to the family despite her busy touring schedule, while Cissy resented having to be the family’s main source of income for years. Whitney’s older brothers Michael (played by JaQuan Malik Jones) and Gary (played by Daniel Washington) are briefly seen near the beginning of the movie, in a scene where all three siblings are smoking marijuana together in one of the family’s bedrooms. In real life, Gary (who married Pat in 1994) and Michael have admitted that they introduced Whitney to marijuana and cocaine, which became longtime addictions for her. (Whitney’s older brother John Houston III is not shown and is barely mentioned in the movie.)

How did John and Cissy Houston’s troubled marriage affect Whitney? The movie quickly depicts a young adult Whitney looking sad and disturbed as she listens to her parents arguing in another room. But she’s never really shown opening up to anyone about how all of this turmoil affected her. By the time Whitney meets Robyn Crawford (played by Nafessa Williams), who’s three years older than Whitney, on a basketball court, Whitney is all too happy to name drop the famous people who are in her family, in order to impress Robyn. The movie portrays Whitney and Robyn’s first meeting in 1983, when they actually met in 1980.

As shown in the movie, Whitney and Robyn became fast friends and eventually became lovers. For a while, Whitney and Robyn lived together before Whitney became famous and during the early years of her fame. It’s a romance that the real Crawford publicly confirmed in her 2019 memoir “A Song for You: My Life With Whitney Houston,” after years of speculation and gossip about the true nature of their relationship. Brown, who was married to Whitney from 1992 to 2007, also told intimate details about his volatile relationship with Whitney (which included love-triangle jealousy between him and Crawford) in his 2016 memoir “Every Little Step: My Story.”

“Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” then shows the expected rise to fame of Whitney, beginning with a very contrived-looking scene of Cissy seeing Arista Records founder Clive Davis (played by Stanley Tucci) in the audience before the start of one of Cissy’s shows at Sweetwater’s Club in New York City. Cissy pretends to lose her voice, so that a confused Whitney would go on stage in Cissy’s place. Whitney sings a cover version of George Benson’s 1977 song “The Greatest Love of All,” which later became a hit from Whitney’s 1985 self-titled debut album. Clive is predictably blown away by Whitney’s talent; some variations of “I can make you star” scenes happen; Whitney signs a record deal with Arista; and Whitney becomes an instant smash.

Throughout the movie, Whitney is shown being torn between her public image and how she lived in private. From the beginning of her career at Arista, it was planned that she would have the image of a clean-cut princess who would have wide crossover appeal among many races and generations. Behind the scenes, Whitney is shown as someone who was already using drugs, and she didn’t really like wearing the dresses and wigs that she was pressured to wear as part of her “princess” image.

Behind the scenes, Whitney and Robyn were open about their relationship, but Whitney’s father/manager and other handlers told Whitney to appear like a heterosexual bachelorette who wanted to eventually get married to a man. Because of Whitney’s religious Christian upbringing, the movie shows her often being personally conflicted about her same-sex romance with Robyn, while Robyn had no such doubts. When the tabloid media would later report that Whitney was a lesbian, Whitney would deny it, which is technically an accurate denial, because she was also sexually attracted to men, and she probably identified as queer or bisexual.

When Whitney has a short-lived affair with singer Jermaine Jackson (played by Jaison Hunter), her duet partner on 1985’s “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do,” the movie shows Robyn flying into a rage and trashing the home where she and Whitney live. The movie does not mention that Jermaine was married to his first wife, Hazel Gordy (daughter of Motown founder Berry Gordy), at the time of Jermaine’s affair with Whitney. Eventually, Whitney and Robyn moved on to other love partners, but Robyn and Whitney continued to work together.

The movie also shows how Whitney’s relationship with Robyn led to clashes with Whitney’s father/manager John (who didn’t like that Whitney hired inexperienced Robyn as Whitney’s personal assistant) and later conflicts with Whitney’s husband Bobby, when Robyn had been promoted at the time to being Whitney’s creative director. (“She’s my princess!” John sneers at Robyn, during one of the movie’s cringeworthy lines of dialogue.) When the addictions to drugs and alcohol got out of control for Whitney and Bobby, the movie portrays Robyn as one of the few people in the couple’s entourage who would try to put a stop to it. But those efforts got stubborn resistance from self-destructive Whitney and Bobby. Robyn, who eventually quit working with Whitney in 2000, left the entertainment business.

Whitney’s relationship with Robyn in the early years of Whitney’s career are the scenes that seem the most genuine in portraying the “real” Whitney Houston. In a somewhat amusing scene, Robyn and Whitney both barge into John’s office, where he and his mistress/secretary Barbara (played by Andrea Eversley) are interrupted while being affectionate with each other. Whitney reacts like she knows that her father has been cheating on her mother, but Whitney doesn’t want to talk about it. Meanwhile, before Barbara leaves the room, she calls Whitney the family nickname for Whitney—Nippy—and Whitney and Robyn give each other a look, as if they’re thinking, “Say what? How dare she use the name Nippy!”

“Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” has repetitive scenes of Whitney being bothered by criticism that she wasn’t “black enough” for some black audiences because of her choice of music, her mainstream success and her “America’s sweetheart” image. In other scene, Whitney gets defensive and angry with a radio DJ who tells her that many black people think she’s a sellout to her race. Whitney also makes a point of telling people that she didn’t grow up spoiled and rich.

The movie shows how Whitney tries to keep her composure in the audience when she gets booed at the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards while her name was announced as one of the show’s nominees for Best Music Video, and losing in that category to Janet Jackson. Robyn is Whitney’s date at this show. The movie alters a few details, because the booing incident actually happened at the 1988 Soul Train Music Awards, not at the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards.

The 1989 Soul Train Music Awards was where Whitney met Bobby, who was seated in front of her. Whitney gets his attention by swinging her purse deliberately so that the purse hit his head. (In real life, Whitney said she got his attention by kicking his chair, and he was really irritated by it.) Sanders portrays Bobby as someone who can be both a selfish troublemaker and a generous charmer, but the movie still leaves out some of the worst public information about Bobby.

Tucci’s portrayal of music mogul Clive is surprisingly subdued and not as interesting as it could have been, considering the real Clive Davis (who is one of the movie’s producers) has a reputation for being very charismatic. The movie shows Whitney telling Clive before she makes her first album with Arista that she doesn’t want to make white music or black music. She just wants to make great music. It’s one of several examples of the movie’s hokey dialogue that doesn’t ruin the movie but certainly lowers the quality of the film. Another example is when Clive first sees Whitney perform at Sweetwater’s Club, and he declares to his subordinate Gerry Griffith (played by Lance A. Williams), who persuaded Clive to be there: “I believe I’ve heard the greatest voice of her generation.”

The movie makes a half-hearted attempt to explain why Whitney didn’t go to rehab sooner for her addictions. In a scene shortly before Whitney records her first album, Clive promises that he won’t judge her or lecture her about her personal life. It isn’t until Whitney starts canceling performances, and the record company is losing money in other ways because of her drug problems, that Clive finally intervenes and tells her that she needs to go to rehab. It’s a very over-simplified scene because there were a lot more people involved in enabling Whitney and getting her to go to rehab. Her first public stint in rehab was in 2005.

What stands out most in this movie are undoubtedly the near-perfect recreations of Whitney’s on-stage performances, with the best highlight being Whitney’s performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Super Bowl XXV in 1991. The scene is shown with the pomp and circumstance of immersing audiences into a VIP experience of that spectacular performance. Even though in real life, Whitney used a prerecorded track instead of singing live, the energy in the performance and her vocal expressions are what really captivated people the most.

Other recreations in the movie include Whitney’s performance of “Home” on “The Merv Griffin Show” in 1983; her music videos for 1985’s “How Will I Know,” 1987’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” 1992’s “I Will Always Love You” and 1998’s “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay”; and 1994’s Whitney: The Concert for a New South Africa. The movie also has performances depicting some of her tours spanning several decades, from the 1980s to her ill-fated 2009-2010 last tour. The songs she performs in these concert scenes include “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” “I’m Every Woman,” “So Emotional” and “One Moment in Time.” There’s also a depiction of Whitney’s musical director Rickey Minor (played by Dave Heard) convincing a reluctant and skeptical Whitney in a rehearsal space to do her 1994 American Music Awards medley and rehearsing it for the first time.

The movie accurately shows how her final tour wasn’t exactly a triumph, since many of the shows were not well-attended, started late, or were canceled. In addition, Whitney got some negative reviews for not being able to hit the same notes that she could in the past. Whitney’s financial problems and her legal battles with her father (who sued her for $100 million in 2002, as he was dying in a hospital) are also depicted like more plot developments in a soap opera. Pat Houston (played by Kris Sidberry), who took over as Whitney’s manager after Whitney fired her father, is portrayed as the person who pointed out to Whitney that John Houston’s irresponsible spending led to Whitney’s losing so much money, she describes her fortune as “almost gone” in a scene where she confronts her father about it.

For every showstopping musical performance in the movie, the off-stage recreations are hit and miss, usually marred by shallow dialogue and very contrived scenarios. When Bobby and Whitney begin dating and are labeled an “odd couple” by the media, Bobby is defensive and tells Whitney why they have so much in common: “We from the ‘hood!” Bobby’s marriage proposal in a limousine is made to look intentionally comedic. As soon as Whitney says yes, he confesses that one of his ex-girlfriends is pregnant with their second child. Whitney gets angry, storms out of the limo, and the couple has one of many arguments shown in the movie.

Whitney and Bobby’s 1992 wedding, which was extravagant and had about 800 guests in real life, looks like a cheap imitation in the movie, which does a quick montage that makes it look like hardly anyone was at the wedding. Don’t expect the movie to give much insight into how Whitney was as a mother. Whitney and Bobby’s daughter, Bobbi Kristina (played as an adolescent by Bria Danielle Singleton), is portrayed as Whitney’s sidekick who doesn’t have much of a personality. (Bobbi Kristina’s tragic death at age 22 in 2015 is not mentioned in the movie.)

To its credit, “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is more candid and a better-made film than Lifetime’s relatively low-budget 2015 movie “Whitney” (starring Yaya DaCosta as Whitney), which was directed by Angela Bassett. Lifetime’s “Whitney” movie was not sanctioned by the Whitney Houston estate, which might be why “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” excels in showing Whitney as a music artist. For all of its shortcomings, “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” at least gets it right when it comes to representing Whitney’s musical essence that remains her greatest legacy.

TriStar Pictures will release “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” in U.S. cinemas on December 23, 2022.

Review: ‘A Journal for Jordan,’ starring Michael B. Jordan and Chanté Adams

December 4, 2021

by Carla Hay

“A Journal for Jordan”

Directed by Denzel Washington

Culture Representation: Taking place from 1998 to 2018, in New York City; Akron, Ohio; Washington, D.C.; and Iraq, the dramatic film “A Journal for Jordan” has a racially diverse cast of characters (African American and white people, with a few Asians and Latinos) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Based on true events, a single mother to a 12-year-old son tells the story of her relationship with her son’s deceased father, who was a U.S. Army sergeant killed in the line of duty in Iraq.

Culture Audience: “A Journal for Jordan” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Michael B. Jordan, director Denzel Washington (who does not appear in the movie) and emotion-driven stories about love and loss.

“A Journal for Jordan” pulls at audience heartstrings in all the right ways by telling this romantic and bittersweet story that ultimately celebrates life and what we make of it. Directed by Denzel Washington and written by Virgil Williams, the dramatic film “A Journal for Jordan” is based on journalist/book publisher Dana Canedy’s 2008 memoir of the same name. The book not only told Canedy’s story but also the story of her fiancé Charles Monroe King, a U.S. Army sergeant who was killed in the line of duty in Iraq in 2006, less than two months before he had been scheduled to return to the United States. The book included King’s journal entries that he wrote to his and Canedy’s son Jordan, who was a baby when King died.

“A Journal for Jordan,” which is Washington’s fourth feature film as a director, is his most sentimental and heartwearming movie that he’s helmed so far. It’s also the first movie that Oscar-winning actor Washington has directed where he is not in the movie as an actor. Although the movie’s title might give the impression that Jordan (played by Jalon Christian) is the focus of the story, he is not.

The story (which jumps around in the timeline) is centered on Jordan’s parents Dana (played by Chanté Adams) and Charles (played by Michael B. Jordan) and what happened during their eight-year romance. The other parts of the movie show Dana’s life as a single mother raising Jordan. Washington and Jordan are two of the producers of “A Journal for Jordan.”

A movie like this could be overly sappy, but director Washington shows admirable restraint in letting the story unfold tenderly—mostly in flashbacks that have the tone of fond memories through the lens of longing for someone who has passed away. Even the film’s musical score (by Marcelo Zarvos) is understated. There are no bombastic, violin-heavy orchestrations to manipulate people’s emotions, as is often the case with movies about tragic love stories.

“A Journal for Jordan” opens with a fever-dream type of montage that’s a collage of memories of Charles and Dana as lovers, as well as scenes of the Iraq combat zone where Charles tragically lost his life. If people see this movie without knowing what the story is about beforehand, it’s clear in the first five minutes that someone has died. The movie doesn’t take long to tell audiences who it is.

The movie’s first scene of dialogue takes place in New York City in 2007. Dana is a senior editor at The New York Times, where she’s an intelligent, hard-working and ambitious employee who does investigative news work. She’s just landed an interview with an important source for a story she’s been working on of her own initiative.

When she tells her boss (played by Stephen Sherman) that she got this crucial interview, she’s dismayed to find out that he’s assigned a co-worker named Rosenblum (played by Spencer Squire) to work with her on the story, based on Rosenblum saying (but not proving) that he could have valuable information to add. Dana isn’t happy about someone being added to a story that she worked hard on from the beginning. And she says so to her boss, who basically cuts her off and ignores her concerns, as he walks side-by-side with Rosenblum in front of her.

When the boss turns around to talk to Dana, he has a look of slight disgust on his face as he indicates to Dana that she should look at her blouse. Dana looks down at her blouse and is embarrassed to see there’s a stain from leakage of breast milk. It’s a moment that nursing mothers can dread because they know that there are sexist bosses and co-workers who think that pregnancy and childbirth make women less competent employees.

Viewers who’ve worked in newsrooms will also notice how realistic this scene is in showing the subtle but still noticeable ways in which people who aren’t white men are often treated with less respect in work environments that give white men the biggest leadership positions and the highest salaries. The scene also shows that Dana is the type of person who’s not afraid to speak up for herself, even if she doesn’t get the results that she deserves. In other words, Dana is no pushover.

As a frustrated Dana goes back to her office, she gripes to a middle-aged co-worker named Miriam (played by Susan Pourfar), who is Jordan’s godmother, about Rosenblum being dropped in on her assignment, probably because she knows that Rosenblum will get credit for a lot of the work that Dana did. Miriam is sympathetic, but she seems worried about how Dana is living. “Don’t isolate yourself,” Miriam tells Dana.

Miriam thinks Dana’s life should be about more than just going to work and going home. Dana reminds Miriam that she’s a single mother of a baby and doesn’t have time for much of a personal life. At home, Dana seems lonely and somewhat overwhelmed—not about taking care of the baby but by grief over the loss of Jordan’s father.

And sure enough, Charles appears to her in a dream, as a somewhat shadowy figure where he says, “Tell him everything, Ma.” (Ma was his nickname for Dana after she became a mother.) And the next thing you know, Dana is on her computer, typing out her memories of Charles for Jordan to read when he gets old enough to understand.

During her writing, Dana also includes quotes that Charles wrote in his “A Father’s Legacy” journal. Some of the quotes include: “Dear Jordan, I want you to know that it’s okay for boys to cry” because “crying can release a lot of pain and stress. It has nothing to do with your manhood.” This trip down memory lane triggers the flashbacks that are shown in the movie.

The majority of the movie then shows the ups and downs of the relationship between Charles and Dana, beginning when they met in 1998. Charles was a first sergeant in the U.S. Army stationed in Ohio. At this point in his life, Charles has been in the Army for 11 years. He grew close to Dana’s retired parents (played by Robert Wisdom and Tamara Tunie), who live in Akron, Ohio. Charles’ parents aren’t seen in the movie, but soon after he meets Dana, he tells Dana that he loves his parents, but he couldn’t get through certain things in life without the family-like support of Dana’s parents.

Dana’s parents treat Charles almost like a son. How this surrogate family relationship developed is not shown in the movie, which is told from Dana’s perspective. Dana’s strict father used to be a drill sergeant in the U.S. Army. Charles met Dana’s father through some kind of Army connection. After Dana meets Charles, she finds out that he’s so close to her father, that Charles calls him Pop. Charles tells Dana it’s because her parents have helped him with a lot of emotional support. She replies sarcastically, “You didn’t grow up with them.”

Dana tries to avoid visiting her parents as much as possible. It’s not that she doesn’t love them, but seeing her parents brings back painful memories of her childhood and reminds her of the type of life that she doesn’t want to have. It’s revealed in bits in pieces of conversations in the movie that Dana thinks that her parents have an unhappy marriage and that it’s her father’s fault because he has a long history of infidelity. Dana saw firsthand how this infidelity made her mother miserable but afraid to end the marriage. It’s why Dana has major issues with trust and commitment when it comes to romantic relationships.

In the spring of 1998, Dana goes back home to visit her family, which also includes her younger bachelorette sister Gwen and her younger married brother Mike. As an indication of how much distance she wants to keep from her parents, Dana stays in a hotel instead of her parents’ house during this visit. During a sibling conversation in their parents’ backyard (where Gwen calls Dana a “Type A” personality), Dana makes no apologies for her big-city, single life. “Men are luxuries, not necessities,” Dana comments.

Dana meets Charles when she stops by his place at the recommendation of her father, who clearly wants to play matchmaker. Charles is an illustrator artist in his spare time. (He likes to do portraits of people.) Dana admires his work and asks him who his favorite artists are. He says Claude Monet and Georges Seurat.

Dana, who considers herself to be a sophisticated intellectual, is immediately impressed. Charles also says that his life goal is to retire from the Army when he reaches the title of sergeant major, and then he wants to devote his time to painting art. After finding out about his love of art, Dana gives Charles an obvious chance to visit her in New York. She tells Charles that maybe he’d like to see a real Monet painting up close at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

There’s an immediate attraction between Dana and Charles, but she plays it cool overall, at first. Because Charles knows that Dana is staying at a hotel, Charles asks Dana if he can drive her to the Canedy family barbecue happening the next day. She agrees and is a little taken aback when he suggests that he pick her up at 9 a.m., which is hours before the barbecue starts.

Dana says yes, but she oversleeps and isn’t ready when Charles arrives to pick her up at scheduled 9 a.m. time. She’s very apologetic, he’s very understanding, and they head to a local diner to have breakfast. It all sounds like the beginnings of an ideal romance. But there are a few obstacles, as there are always seems to be in real-life love stories that are made into movies.

For starters, Charles tells Dana that he’s in the middle of a divorce. His estranged wife, who lives in Texas, has custody of their daughter Christina. (Christina is never seen in the movie.) Charles tells Dana that his marriage fell apart because he and his soon-to-be-ex-wife were too young when they got married, but he says that he loves being a father. Dana is accepting of this information, but she’s thinking at this point that Charles isn’t likely to become her boyfriend because they would have to do long-distance dating.

Things go well at the barbecue. Charles is polite, respectful and attentive to Dana. And, of course, family members happily notice that Dana seems to like Charles as much as he seems to like her. However, the realities of Charles’ divorce and single parenthood come crashing in on Charles and Dana’s first date when he leaves the barbecue early because he says he has a phone date to talk with Christina.

Another slight bump in the road comes when it takes nearly two months for Charles to call Dana again after their first date together. She’s slightly annoyed that it took him this long, but he explains that he waited until his divorce was made final. Dana likes Charles enough to give him a chance to get to know her better.

Dana and Charles end up dating, of course, and their romance kicks into high gear when he visits her many times in New York. On the first visit, she invites him to stay with her at her apartment. First, she says he can sleep on the couch. Then, she changes her mind and says he can sleep in the same bed with her.

Their courtship is sweet and passionate. Charles is not as sophisticated as Dana initially thought he was, but she doesn’t mind. For example, when he first visits her in New York, they go to an Italian restaurant for a dinner date. It’s there that Dana finds out that Charles doesn’t know what olive oil is because he asks her what it is when it’s put on the table. Dana also has to educate Charles on the differences between shows that are Broadway, off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway.

In addition, Dana thinks Charles could have a better sense of fashion. She notices that he likes to wear jeans and scruffy-looking athletic shoes. No problem. She buys him a designer suit as her first Christmas gift to him. He’s a little uncomfortable with wearing suits, but he knows that if he’s going to be in Dana’s life and the types of social events that she goes to, there’ll come a time when he’ll have to wear a fancy suit. And so, Charles accepts the gift when Dana goes with him in the store to see if the suit fits.

Charles also likes to tell corny jokes. Dana doesn’t mind that either. She thinks it’s actually a little endearing. For example, one of his running jokes is saying, “Guess what?” And then following it up by saying, “Chicken butt.” These are some of the little jokes that couples have that make Charles and Dana’s romance realistic and relatable to people who’ve had similar relationships. Meanwhile, Dana’s career at The New York Times is thriving, and she eventually gets promoted to senior editor.

It’s not all smoth sailing though for Charles and Dana’s relationship. Charles’ Army career means that he has to move around a lot. There are also instances where Dana gets upset because she thinks that Charles seems to care more about his Army colleagues than he cares about her, while he thinks she’s not understanding enough about his military responsibilities. These disagreements about his Army commitments cause the biggest conflicts in their relationship. After 9/11 happens and Charles is deployed to Iraq, the relationship gets put even more to the test.

“A Journal for Jordan” can be a little too slow-paced for some viewers, but the movie remains thoroughly grounded in reality. The fact of the matter is that in real life, a lot of romances go in stops and starts. People who want to see a movie with a lot of melodramatic contrivances found in too many romantic dramas will be disappointed. There’s no love triangle, no meddling best friend, no race to the airport to tell someone they want to make the relationship work. People who are tired of seeing these over-used clichés in romantic movies will be delighted that “A Journal for Jordan” can’t be bothered with these clichés.

What audiences will get is an authentic look at a romance between emotionally mature and responsible adults. Adams gives a charming and engaging performance that exudes all the real qualities that strong, independent women have when they allow themselves to be open and vulnerable to love. Jordan is equally charismatic in his own way in portraying this Army sergeant with a strong moral compass, a deep sense of loyalty and a romantic side that many people look for in a partner.

Charles is not a flashy Romeo but someone who says and does what exactly what he means. And that’s so much more important than “big talkers” who make grandiose promises that they have no intention of keeping. Charles and Dana aren’t perfect, but when they make mistakes or hurt each other emotionally, they try to make things right. And they accept each other for who they are. That’s true love.

“A Journal for Jordan” is a refreshing example of a movie that shows what a lot of middle-class African Americans are really like. It’s become tiresome to see African American romances depicted in movies and TV shows as relationships plagued by crime, poverty or drugs. The reality is that many African Americans are a lot like Charles and Dana, so kudos to everyone involved who helped make this true story into a movie.

“A Journal for Jordan” is also about another type of love story that’s just as important, even though it doesn’t get as much screen time in the movie: the love between a parent and a child. The scenes of Jordan as a 12-year-old have a deep emotional impact because it’s when he starts to become very curious about his father. Jordan’s questions bring up heartbreaking memories for Dana, who has been reluctant to tell Jordan the details of how Charles died.

Even though most of the movie is about the mostly happy romance between Dana and Charles, make no mistake: There are several scenes in the movie that are intended to be tearjerkers. Two of these scenes involve a bunch of red balloons that Charles had with him on a day that he and Dana were spending some time outdoors with Jordan. Another emotionally charged sequence happens during a trip that Dana and 12-year-old Jordan take to Washington, D.C.

The pace might drag a little in some areas of “A Journal for Jordan,” but if you care about these characters and what happens to them, then the movie is watchable from beginning to end. You don’t have to come from a military family to relate to what happens in the movie. Anyone who has treasured memories of a loved one can relate to this true story, which has been eloquently expressed in this inspirational film.

Columbia Pictures will release “A Journal for Jordan” in U.S. cinemas on December 25, 2021.