What's Love Got to Do with It · reception & legacy
1993 · Brian Gibson
How What's Love Got to Do with It has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A hit in '93 with Oscar nods for both leads, it's since become Exhibit A in the Great Oscar Snub discourse — Angela Bassett losing Best Actress that year reads even more egregious now that the performance is treated as an all-timer.
What's debated
Fans still argue over how much dramatic licence the film took with Tina Turner's real story — Ike Turner protested his portrayal, and Tina herself kept her distance from the finished film.
Its footprint
"Eat the cake, Anna Mae" escaped the movie entirely — quoted, memed, and infamously invoked in Jay-Z's verse on Beyoncé's 'Drunk in Love,' which reignited debate about the line decades later.
Where it stands
A fixture of the music-biopic canon and the go-to citation whenever cinephiles rank the greatest performances that didn't win the Oscar.