The Bobby Brown Story was a highly anticipated biopic centered around the highs and lows of the life of “Bad Boy” Bobby Brown. Of course, with Bobby still being alive he had a lot of input on what was shown and how he was portrayed. However, with his ex-wife Whitney Houston being dead, he also had free reign on how she was portrayed as well. It was a pretty awful portrayal to say the least. I’m sure everyone is aware of how toxic their relationship full of drugs and infidelity was, but this is a completely different side of the story.
Bobby starts his story after he’s kicked out of the boy band, New Edition, and decides to start his own career. He drops a bomb that made Twitter go crazy. He reveals that he and Janet Jackson were messing around while she was engaged to James DeBarge in the early ‘80’s. He then goes through the early stages of his solo career up until he actually meets Whitney at an awards show. They go on a couple of dates and he eventually proposes after them being together for about 3 years. He shows that he was first introduced to cocaine through Whitney on their wedding day when he walks in their bedroom and finds her using. Now I find it kind of hard to believe that the “Bad Boy of R&B” had never been introduced to cocaine before then.
He then goes on to show Whitney as pretty much a terrible wife. At one point in the movie, Bobby is cooking cocaine for him and Whitney to use, but in the process, he falls out and has a stroke. Whitney comes downstairs and finds Bobby on the ground unresponsive with broken glass everywhere and thinks it’s a joke. Instead of being concerned and calling the ambulance, she takes the cocaine out of his hand and tells him she’s gonna start using without him. Of course, I don’t know how true the portrayal of this scene is, but it seemed a little exaggerated and unrealistic that Whitney wouldn’t be worried or concerned at all seeing her husband lying on the ground.
In another scene, Bobby shows his struggles of getting clean while in jail and him finally getting to a better place in his life. Once he gets out, Whitney greets him with a bottle of cocaine and tries to pressure him into using after he repeatedly tells her he’s done with using drugs. He even suggests that she try to get clean herself, but she refuses. Now I am very well aware that drugs can change a person, but I can’t seem to wrap my head around this awful representation of Whitney. It’s not like Bobby doesn’t show his own faults and personal problems, but he makes it look like a lot of them stem from his relationship with Whitney.
There are always three sides to a story, the two different sides, and the truth. I guess this truth was a little more shocking and unbelievable than we all expected.