Maybe it's the years of literary analysis I've done in my undergrad and graduate school, but I can no longer like/relate to a character in any media simply because they are the protagonist. It's not in me; the work itself has to make me like them.
Waiting to Exhale does not do that.
The main character, Bernadine, (I say main now because we've seen her the most. It's really an ensemble cast) has been left by her husband of eleven years for another woman. Now, that sucks. It sucks real bad. However, that doesn't make me automatically side with her.
The very first thing we hear is Bernadine complaining in her head about having to go to another function for her husband, which is not endearing. We also see her set a car full of his possessions on fire, which is what a freaking crazy person does. I'm just saying, there was a full tank of gas in that car. I know you're hurting lady, but we don't need any explosions in this movie. Also, that is not emotional healthy at all. Like, at all.
But what really got me was what a HUGE deal Bernadine made about the fact that the woman she was left for was white. She said it like it was an insult and then called her husband white, again like an insult. I don't want to cry racism, but yeah. I didn't care for that. If the movie was a group of white women making a big deal about a relationship being interacial they would be seen as racist and regressive.
Maybe the film will get better as we progress, but I've yet to see any reason to like this character. We've seen bad things happen to her, but we've yet to see her do anything to endear us to the character. Feeling bad for someone doesn't make you like them, especially if they are also shown to have serious flaws.
One more little thing not really related to the rest of this post: I find the overall writing for the movie to be clunky. Show, don't tell. And having a character spill exposition out loud does not count as showing, even if you throw a shot of a dog in to make it look like she's not just talking out loud to explain things to the audience that you weren't able to properly write in. No. Bad movie. Don't do that.
On a positive note, Lorette Devine is in it and she's pretty cool. I usually enjoy her work, and her character in this comes across as a genuinely nice person. She just found out the man she's still in love with is gay, and this movie was made in 1995 (not the most progressive time for gay characters in media), so we'll see where that goes.