YMMV / Waiting to Exhale

• Awesome Music: The entire soundtrack is made of Award Bait Songs. Whitney Houston naturally contributed multiple singles, but it also got contributions from TLC, Brandy, Toni Braxton, Patti LaBelle, Mary J. Blige, even Aretha Franklin, among others. One of Houston's songs, "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)", won a Grammy Award. Four songs got Platinum RIAA status, and the soundtrack as a whole is 7x Multi-Platinum.^note Unfortunately, it garnered precisely zero Academy Award nominations.
• Award Snub:
  • Angela Bassett's painful, powerful performance as the scorned wife Bernadine did not receive a Best Actress nomination by the Oscars.
  • The soundtrack, in addition to getting zero Academy Award nominations, only won a single Grammy Award out of eleven nominations in nine categories. That includes getting wiped out of the the Best Female R&B Vocal Performance category, where three of the artists (Houston, Brandy, and Blige) lost to the Toni Braxton song that wasn't on this soundtrack: "You're Making Me High".^note "Let it Flow", her song on this soundtrack, was the B-side on its single. But the award was for that song, not the single. So it doesn't count toward this soundtrack.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Whitney Houston's character — someone who is "the other woman" vainly hoping for her married lover to run away with her — is *extremely* similar to the narrator of "Saving All My Love For You," her first #1 hit.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In the film, after Bernadine sets her cheating husband's car on fire, she is only let off with a stern warning from a cop. A year after the film premiered, a Chicago woman emulated the scene due to her cheating boyfriend. She was charged with arson, fined tens of thousands of dollars, and sentenced to five years probation, showcasing how even if someone may feel justified to do so, the law will not agree.
  • Gloria's ex-husband comes out as gay which led to an amicable divorce (namely to protect their son). A decade later, author Terry McMillan's own husband would come out as gay and had married her to get a green card, leading to a very public and acrimonious divorce.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Bernadine's burning up her ex's car and her rant is very much this. "I was your white woman for __ years!"
  • "You raggedy bitch!"
• Retroactive Recognition: Wendell Pierce, Michael Beach and Mykelti Williamson all went on to play shady/antagonistic characters on Chicago P.D..
• Signature Scene: From the movie, the Break-Up Bonfire... using the cheating ex-husband's entire wardrobe and expensive car.
• Values Dissonance: Gloria angrily tells her son Tarik that she would send him away to stay with his father David if only the latter wasn't gay, and Tarik's response is laden with homophobic slurs. The scene reflects outdated societal anti-gay prejudices that lingered into the 1990s.

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