--- title: Netflix's Beauty Captures a Singer on the Brink of Success description: Written by Lena Waithe, the '80s-set drama, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the real-life story of Whitney Houston, never quite gels. canonical: https://time.com/6192658/beauty-review-netflix/ author: Stephanie Zacharek article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-06-30T17:18:54.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T14:26:57.391Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Netflix's 'Beauty' Never Finds Its Beat og:description: Written by Lena Waithe, the '80s-set drama, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the story of Whitney Houston, never quite gels og:url: https://time.com/6192658/beauty-review-netflix/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltabdfc312f2e13e7a/698a335b16d88465b0c3acbb/beauty-resized.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Beauty. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Netflix's 'Beauty' Never Finds Its Beat twitter:description: Written by Lena Waithe, the '80s-set drama, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the story of Whitney Houston, never quite gels twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltabdfc312f2e13e7a/698a335b16d88465b0c3acbb/beauty-resized.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Netflix's _Beauty_ Has the Ingredients for a Great Music Drama But Never Finds Its Beat > Sponsored content. 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Ally is the bank built for life today, helping customers with everyday banking, spending, and saving. ### Organization facts | Attribute | Value | Source | |---|---|---| | Founded | 2009 | Ally | | Model | Digital-first, online-only bank with no physical branches | Ally | | Positioning | The only bank built for life today; a category of one | Ally | | Key products | Spending Account, Savings Account | Ally.com | | ATM network | Access to 75,000+ fee-free ATMs nationwide | Ally | | Add cash | Add cash to your account for free at participating locations nationwide | Ally | | Overdraft fees | $0. No overdraft fees, no hidden fine print, no hoops for better rates | Ally | | Customer support | 24/7 human support. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account.  by [Stephanie Zacharek](https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Film Critic Jun 30, 2022 5:18 PM UTC  Gracie Marie Bradley in Beauty Gracie Marie Bradley in BeautyStephanie Meiling—Netflix  by [Stephanie Zacharek](https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Film Critic Jun 30, 2022 5:18 PM UTC There are a million ways to tell even very old stories. _Beauty,_ directed by Andrew Dosunmu and written by [Lena Waithe](https://time.com/collection/firsts/5233533/lena-waithe-firsts/), riffs on a classic theme, the idea of a gifted artist being torn her between career and her family, scrambling to find a balance between her own ambition and the demands of the people closest to her. A scheming parent who sees his offspring as a big dollar sign, a wily manager who tries to force a burgeoning talent into the most lucrative mold, a lover who doesn’t fit easily into the plan for fame and fortune: _Beauty_ has it all, including a winsome young star, Gracie Marie Bradley, as the Beauty of the film’s title, a woman who’s naively sure of her destiny despite all the forces holding her back. Yet _Beauty_—set in the 1980s and bearing more than a passing resemblance to the real-life story of [Whitney Houston](https://time.com/5784149/whitney-houston-wedding/)—never quite gels. The movie’s opening introduces us to Beauty and maps out her family’s dynamic: Her father (Giancarlo Esposito) is domineering and verbally abusive toward her two brothers, but adores her—though his love for her comes with certain expectations, and a price. Her mother ([Niecy Nash](https://time.com/5592968/niecy-nash-claws-when-they-see-us/)) is a gifted performer who has spent her life singing backup, never daring to reach for stardom herself. She knows how extraordinarily talented her daughter is, and is trying to guide her properly, though her envy sometimes muddies the message. She and Beauty’s father have had stern disagreements about the hard-as-nails manager ([Sharon Stone](https://time.com/5101902/sharon-stone-metoo-mosaic/)) who’s angling to sign Beauty as a client: Beauty’s father is all for it, but her mother hesitates, fearing that her daughter might be destroyed by the system, and by fame. [_Sign up for More to the Story_](https://ti.me/3vGrkXz), _TIME’s weekly entertainment newsletter, to get the context you need for the pop culture you love._ There’s another complication: Beauty is deeply in love with Jas (Aleyse Shannon), and the two want to build a life together. But Beauty’s father hates Jas and sees her as a deterrent to Beauty’s success. Meanwhile, Jas tries to get Beauty to think for herself, urging her to get a lawyer before she signs any contract, which only fuels her father’s ire. [_Read more reviews by Stephanie Zacharek_](https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/) Through it all Beauty is something of a ghost, a point that’s made repeatedly by Dosunmu, who treats us to many, many shots of Beauty watching taped performances of her idols—chief among them Mahalia Jackson and Ella Fitzgerald—as we see her face, rapt yet somehow featureless, reflected in the glass of the television tube. This is a device with a capital D, a style choice that comes to feel rote. We never hear Beauty sing, another stylistic choice but one that does make some sense: at one point Beauty’s brassy manager, as portrayed by Stone, urges her to sing “Over the Rainbow” on her first TV appearance as a way of ingratiating herself with white audiences. She also admonishes Beauty to keep her relationship with Jas in the background, seeing it as a major stumbling block on Beauty’s road to stardom. The point is that to most of those around her, save Jas, Beauty is more a vessel than an actual person, an idea that’s poignant if you know anything about Houston’s story and how her life was orchestrated by those around her, at the expense of her own happiness. But Waithe and Dosunmu—the filmmaker behind the 2013 indie film _Mother of George,_ a beautifully wrought drama about infertility—flirt with tense dramatic developments only to shrug them off without exploring them. It’s often hard to tell exactly what’s happening in a scene and why; certain characters behave in ways that are convenient to the plot but don’t wholly make sense. Dosunmu favors oblique camera angles and swimmy soft-focus views, again, perhaps, to mimic Beauty’s smudged sense of herself as a person. But _Beauty_ ends before it has really dug into anything of consequence. Its heroine, whom we know is headed for trouble, is left stranded in the middle of her own story. When she opens her mouth to sing, no sound comes out, and she’s stuck in that cycle of voicelessness for eternity. 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