Film

Waiting to Exhale

Name: Waiting to Exhale
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Released: 1995
Cast: Whitney Houston, Angela Bassett, Loretta Devine, Lela Rochon, Gregory Hines

Social drama

Four Black women in Phoenix hold each other up through a gauntlet of married men, vanishing men, and men who simply disappoint — laughing, screaming, and occasionally torching a car along the way. Adapted from Terry McMillan's novel, it's glossy ensemble melodrama with real teeth, anchored by an all-star cast and a soundtrack that became as iconic as the film itself. Comfort food with a temper.

TMDb rating

3.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love ensemble stories about friends talking frankly over wine and heartbreak, where the laughs and the bruises arrive in the same scene and the music does half the emotional work.

Skip it if you want a tightly plotted story with a clear through-line, since this drifts between four women's lives and leans on conversation more than on events.

What it asks of you: It runs about two hours and ten minutes and settles in for long stretches of talk, letting each woman's disappointments breathe before the mood shifts toward something lighter.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

How Stella Got Her Groove Back1998

Same author, same star, but McMillan's optimistic answer to the question Exhale asks — Angela Bassett rebuilding herself on a Jamaican beach instead of licking wounds at home.

But The romance leans fantasy-vacation, and the central relationship's age gap raised eyebrows even in 1998.

Soul Food1997

Same ensemble intimacy and era, but centered on a Black family's Sunday dinners holding everyone together — warm, funny, occasionally devastating.

But More family saga than romance, and its slow-burn plotting takes patience compared to Exhale's brisker rhythm.

The Best Man1999

Flip the gender axis: a Black male friend group, weddings, betrayals, and the same electric energy McMillan's world runs on.

But Broader comedy, lower stakes — a wedding farce with teeth rather than an anatomy of heartbreak.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Waiting to Exhale

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Claudine1974

Same question, twenty years earlier and stripped of gloss: can a Black woman trust love again when everything around her is designed to make that hard.

Diahann Carroll earned an Oscar nomination playing a Harlem single mother juggling welfare bureaucracy and a hesitant romance — the unglamorous, decades-earlier ancestor of Exhale's heartbreak.

But No luxury apartments or designer wardrobes — it's rawer and sadder, about survival more than self-actualization.

Girls Trip2017

Four friends, one unhinged trip, all the loyalty and mess of the original cranked into raunchy comedy for a new generation.

But It trades melancholy for spectacle — if you want the ache, this is mostly just the party.

Set It Off1996

Same city energy, four women again — but this time they rob banks instead of relationships, out of desperation instead of romance.

But A heist thriller, not a relationship drama, with an angrier tone and lethal stakes.

Living Single1993

The sitcom version of the same friend group — funnier, cheaper, weekly, full of the same banter about men who won't commit.

But Half-hour pacing and studio-audience laughs are a big tonal step down from feature melodrama.

Steel Magnolias1989

A likely template — women in a small Southern town, a beauty parlor instead of book clubs, laughter used to survive grief.

But Whiter, older, gentler — the racial specificity that makes Exhale distinct isn't here.

Sex and the City1998

Same blueprint: four women, four temperaments, a city as fifth character, narrated with wit about the men who keep letting them down.

But Glossier, wealthier, and much more interested in fashion and one-liners than real consequence.

Poetic Justice1993

Janet Jackson grieving and guarded on a road trip toward maybe-love — a quieter, more poetic register on similar terrain.

But Slower and more meditative, with little of Exhale's ensemble energy or catharsis-through-friendship structure.

Isoken2017

Same waiting, same friends offering commentary, same good-man mythology, filtered through a whole other national cinema's rules for melodrama.

A glossy Nigerian rom-com about a woman past 30 fending off family pressure to marry "correctly" while the wrong men keep showing up — Nollywood's answer to the same anxiety.

But A different film grammar entirely — brighter, broader, more openly comic, and assumes a familiarity with Nigerian family dynamics.

Thelma & Louise1991

Same starting fury at men who fail women, pushed past reconciliation into outright rebellion — the tragic mirror to Exhale's hopeful ending.

What happens when the friendship survives men entirely — two women driving toward freedom instead of romance, rage turned into open highway instead of closed apartments.

But A crime thriller headed somewhere far darker and more violent than anything in Exhale's world.