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The original was posted on /r/movies by /u/LaserDiscCurious on 2025-12-06 16:26:12+00:00.

Original Title: “Waiting to Exhale” (1995) is the perfect 90s women’s film: Four strong women facing social problems while still having the time to drink champagne at night on the beach. Smooth soundtrack. Directed by Forest Whitaker.

Waiting to Exhale might be my favourite Whitney Houston. Nippy still can’t act yet she’s got the support of two outstanding actresses, Angela Bassett and Loretta Devine, and Lela Rochon.

The soundtrack by Babyface is sexy and smooth and does enhance the plot. Of the four women, Angela Basset’s Bernie is the most memorable one as Bernie screams and cries and curses after being left for Kelly Preston’s Kathleen (and whom gets slapped the piss out of) and in the most iconic scene of the film, burns her cheating husband’s car. A lesser actress would have been shrill and over the top yet Basset brings rawness and justified anger into the part.

Loretta Devine brings some comic relief as the sassier one in the group, finds out her ex is bi and her son is about to go on a tour with Up with People (?), so of course they got the gayest storyline for the OG Dreamgirl. I’m surprised they didn’t have her belt I AM LOVE as she and Gregory Hines get close. Devine is impossible to dislike, she’s charming and lovely. I even forgive her for using a gay slur when she finds her son having sex.

Houston and Rochon don’t have a lot going. Houston’s whole arc is superficial, playing a kept woman for a married man, and she does some cockamanie feminist monologue whom even Cicely Tyson couldn’t improve on and Lela Rochon basically spends her very limited screen time moaning.