Soundtracking: "The Bodyguard"
Wednesday, August 23, 2017 at 10:30AM Whitney: Can I Be Me debuts this Friday on Showtime. Chris Feil takes a look at the icon's biggest soundtrack...
The Bodyguard doesn’t deserve its iconic mega-selling soundtrack. Granted, most of us have never pretended that that the film was even a whiff as good as all that glorious vocal dexterity Whitney Houston lays into her six tracks. But rest assured: the movie itself is even worse than you remember.
Among its many sins, the most egregious is how it ignores its own musical assets. The Bodyguard exists in a world where you can enter someone’s home and just happen upon an extended dance sequence being shot for a music video - but it also presents a world where that isn’t anywhere near as fun as it sounds. It spends the first act under the illusion that we give a crap about five or six things more than we do about Whitney’s voice. Why go to the creative effort to cast one of the biggest music acts of the era (and in a quasi-musical!) if you don’t know how to use her?
No sweat for Whitney, even if her acting performance netted her some harsh reviews. As ever, her musical contribution remains untouchable...
But it’s not that the film is holding out for a big musical payoff once the songs begin. The music actually comes in pretty early, existing weirdly in the background whether its the “I’m Every Woman” cover on a radio or the red herring stalker having a music video on the television. We hear a hint of “Run to You” from a character’s headphones as if the music doesn’t belong to us. If The Bodyguard were more musically attuned these bits could feel like it presented a world where music is omnipresent, but its focus remains on anything else really.
It doesn’t just miss the mark on the music, but also in presenting a believable musical world. By spending all of its focus on its absurd thriller elements, The Bodyguard’s vision of fame and celebrity is laughable to anyone who paid any passing attention to MTV, VH1, or entertainment media at the time. We’re supposed to believe that Houston’s Rachel Marron is one of the biggest titans of music and screen, yet her album launch is in some cheap ass club for 100 concert-goers? Of course it gets the impact of the music wrong when it presents it in an unrealistic context.
And if any Oscar watchers want a good chuckle, pay attention to The Bodyguard’s low-rent Oscar ceremony that looks like its set in a Gotham City library. But it does provide a meta moment of “I Have Nothing” being performed mid-faux ceremony. Life would imitate art as the song would be Oscar-nominated along with the vastly underrated “Run to You.”
It is one morose film, all the moreso because it feels so far removed from the joy of music. Whitney’s songs are left to speak for themselves, and to a cultural extent they essentially do; the movie piggybacks on the soundtrack’s success even if it was a box office success. It’s odd that it remains Whitney's musical peak when the film itself is such a musical misfire.
For a better dose of cinema, you could look to the music video for “I Will Always Love You”. In a few minutes the video does better at selling the romance than the films lethargic 2+ hour runtime, not to mention how it delivers on the beauty and drama of this incredible track. Music should make us feel something, experience something, not just lay there flat on the screen. With this career-defining moment, Whitney makes us feel everything.
Previous Soundtracking Favorites:
Evita
The First Wives Club
Big Little Lies
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Sister Act
...all installments can be found here
Reader Comments (23)
It is one of my all time favorite guilty pleasures growing up, so much so that I still watch it dubbed in Portuguese whenever I have the chance ("Droga, Frank, está me deixando louca" cracks me up every. single. time). Its cornballness is enhanced by the atrocious dubbing, much like another fave of mine, Lambada: the Forbidden Dance. The poor production quality, especially that low rent Oscar ceremony, the preposterous plot, Kevin Costner whiskering Whitney off stage from a maddened crowd, a meant to be sexy scene using scarves and samurai swords as props... it is a giant shame-based treat, so I disavow this review (even though it is 100% correct).
Plus the soundtrack gave Michelle Visage her only non-Ru cotail claim to glory, so one more reason to love it.
Now if you excuse me, I will listen to that massive anduuuuuuuuuuh glory note in I Will Always Love You until I explode into one million corny little pieces!
Michelle Visage, girl stop relying on that Body... guard soundtrack.
Carmen Sandiego: How did I not know that Michelle Visage provided the lead vocal on that "Lovely Day" interpolation? Mind equals blown.
That the music is almost completely incidental to the story probably is the movie's biggest sin, and that's saying a lot considering how corny the film is. Yeah, the songs exist but not as centerpieces and -- as astutely pointed out in this write up -- not as consequential to anything which happens in the foreground. On the plus side, Whitney never sounded better (this era truly was her vocal peak), and her megawatt charisma more than made up for her acting shortcomings.
But what I really wanna know is when are we gonna get a stage musical adaptation of Waiting to Exhale?
Troy H -- oooh what a great movie that would be to get the musical treatment.
craver -LOL
everyone -- i was never a Whitney fan BUT I have crazy big love for "I Have Nothing" which is my fav song on the soundtrack by a huge margin.
Queen of the Night is my go to track but indeed the ballads are peak Whitney,the film is funnier now than I remember it and it's got a way too confusing plot,I wonder what the 70's version of the soundtrack would have been like if Miss Ross had originally starred in it.
If she was campaigned at the Globes were would she have been placed.
This year's Drag Race finale set me off on a Whitney Houston kick. Her discography is so uneven...A hip-hop aesthetic never agreed with her voice. The maudlin ballads aren't really my gig. And the more of them she did, the more derivative they felt.
There are about 10 monumental Whitney Houston tracks and the rest are unlistenable schlock and junk. But those 10 tracks are some of the greatest and most enduring songs in my personal rotation.
The real shame is that she never leaned into the disco/house genre. Her cover of "I'm Every Woman" is evidence that she would've slayed some great original club songs in the 90s. She was mismanaged all around.
I personally adore "ONE MOMENT IN TIME" from the 80's... it's such an awesome power ballad :-)
Nathaniel: I've been casting it in my head for the past four or five years.
Some films are something special, even if most consider them being bad.
Bodyguard is always a pleasure for me and not a guilty one. It was one of these movies I loved to watch with my aunt when we visited her on Sundays.
I love Run to You and of Course I will always love you.
It's just so tragic what had happened to her (and her only daughter)
I'll always love and miss you, Whitney. 8(
It's an amazing vocal achievement to be sure - I'd put IWALY in the top 5 best pop vocal recordings ever. I revisited earlier in the summer because it had been at least a decade, and the movie was ubiquitous in the 90s. Easily the best scenes are when Whitney is in full diva-mode, it's when they try and sell the love story that the movie falls apart. It's a shame the quality isn't there considering the racial barriers it helped to break.
Track nine! ;)
I did not care for the movie, but I could listen to the soundtrack all day.
I have a minor obsession with my future oblivious husband, Kevin Costner, so I unabashedly love this bad bad movie. But, like "My Heart Will Go On", these songs were so overplayed during that time that I just can't listen to them voluntarily.
My grandma was a Kevin Costner fangirl and had a poster of The Bodyguard on her bedroom door like a 16-year-old. By proxy, I have a love for this movie and soundtrack whether or not it deserves it.
Michelle Visage can brag about Track Nine all she damn wants. It's the best-selling non-Disney soundtrack of all time!
Kevin Costner not only had to fight tooth and nail for Whitney's casting, but also for the beginning of I Will Always Love You to be done a capella (If I should stay ... I would only be in your way ..... BRB CRYING ALREADY)
I agree that Whitney's discography is uneven, and this might be hampered that unlike Mariah or Beyonce, she wasn't a songwriter. But when she worked with the greats like David Foster or Babyface she was phenomenal. My favorite song of hers will always be the Wyclef Jean-penned "My Love is Your Love", which will play at my imaginary three-way wedding to Channing Tatum, Chris Hemsworth, and John Cena.
It's an OK film. It has its moments.
BTW, at least the soundtrack gave Nick Lowe a shitload of money since there was someone who covered the song "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love, & Understanding?" that appears in the film.
100% agree - the movie is a mess, yet I still watch it to the end every time I stumble across it on TV
Re: Michelle Visage - there's one amazing song on this soundtrack by a white girl "soul" singer on this album and it's not by Michelle (***cough*** LISA STANSFIELD)
Re: Whitney - some of her finest moments are in the R&B genre, yet they generally appear in her discography once she was "under the influence". A very wise person once said that she was too easily manipulated in the early stages of her career, and I agree. I love the Whitney album as much as anyone but, still... what a waste!
No movie in which the leads see Kurosawa's Yojimbo can be that bad.
The movie is bad, but I do get a kick out of that Oscar ceremony where she throws her hands in the air when she wins.
The Whitney half of the soundtrack is great, but the rest is an odd mish mash. Michelle Visage next to Kenny G!
I Will Always Love You is beautiful, but I've always had a soft spot for I Have Nothing. Whitney's voice was just amazing.
"I Have Nothing" > "A Whole New World" :)
The merit of The Bodyguard is the register of Whitney Houston in the peak of her youth, talent and beauty. Easy to see that she would do better with a better script. I know some people that get first contact with her work with this movie, like the knew generations meeting Barbra Streisand, Doris Day and Judy Garland, great musical talents preserved in movies. Other artists weren't so lucky as Houston. The movie also shows the power and prestige that Kevin Costner had one day. He made the movie to be a hit, like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman - the revelation of Julia Roberts. And we may never forget that Rachel Marron anticipated - unintentionally - Halle Berry's Oscar.
@Jakey - that's one of my favorite songs of Houston's, too! If not maybe my absolute fave. It's definitely top 3.
I would rate the movie 3/5. I must say the script was not good. And the story never built up to the end. I felt sorry that after years of holding the movie from showing that dates back to Diana Ross, the final script was still erratic, not close to being good. But I always believe that the movie could have been one of the greatest love stories that ever told. The movie could have had the best movie ending had they cut the scene from when they were kissing at the airport, while the scene was gradually fading. But they didn't do that. They included the Pope at the ending instead, which made the movie mediocre, but not horribly. If James Cameron was the director, he would have made this an epic one.