MOVIES . . . WAITING TO EXHALE

: Like most soap operas, the film version of Terry McMillan's best seller wins hot tears from its audience by imagining the worst things that could happen to decent people. Starring Angela Bassett and Whitney Houston, this is the familiar story of a quartet of young females looking for love and identity. Director Forest Whitaker ties his film's women to the railroad tracks of caprice and invites us to watch as a betraying beau comes chugging toward them. But Waiting to Exhale doesn't have the idiot vigor to become a camp classic like the movie Valley of the Dolls, says TIME's Richard Corliss. "This ain't art -- it's more like tasty junk food."