Best movies like Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Similar in 80%

Boy (2010)

Plot Summary:

It's 1984, and Michael Jackson is king - even in Waihau Bay, New Zealand. Here we meet Boy, an 11-year-old who lives on a farm with his gran, a goat, and his younger brother, Rocky (who thinks he has magic powers). Shortly after Gran leaves for a week, Boy's father, Alamein, appears out of the blue. Having imagined a heroic version of his father during his absence, Boy comes face to face with the real version-an incompetent hoodlum who has returned to find a bag of money he buried years before. This is where the goat enters.

Similar in 88%

What We Did on Our Holiday (2014)

Plot Summary:

Doug and Abi and their three children travel to the Scottish Highlands for Doug's father Gordie's birthday party. It's soon clear that when it comes to keeping a secret under wraps from the rest of the family, their children are their biggest liability.

Similar in 81%

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013)

Plot Summary:

A 12-year-old cartographer secretly leaves his family's ranch in Montana where he lives with his cowboy father and scientist mother and travels across the country on board a freight train to receive an award at the Smithsonian Institute.

Similar in 76%

Everything Is Illuminated (2005)

Plot Summary:

A film based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by American writer Jonathan Safran Foer, in which a young Jewish American man endeavors—with the help of eccentric, distant relatives—to find the woman who saved his grandfather during World War II, in a Ukrainian village which was ultimately razed by the Nazis.

Similar in 88%

Mud (2012)

Plot Summary:

Two teenage boys encounter a fugitive and make a pact to help him escape from an island in the Mississippi.

Similar in 89%

Jojo Rabbit (2019)

Plot Summary:

A World War II satire that follows a lonely German boy whose world view is turned upside down when he discovers his single mother is hiding a young Jewish girl in their attic. Aided only by his idiotic imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler, Jojo must confront his blind nationalism.

Similar in 80%

Land (2021)

Plot Summary:

Edee, in the aftermath of an unfathomable event, finds herself unable to stay connected to the world she once knew and in the face of that uncertainty, retreats to the magnificent, but unforgiving, wilds of the Rockies. After a local hunter brings her back from the brink of death, she must find a way to live again.

Similar in 88%

Pete's Dragon (2016)

Plot Summary:

For years, old wood carver Mr. Meacham has delighted local children with his tales of the fierce dragon that resides deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. To his daughter, Grace, who works as a forest ranger, these stories are little more than tall tales... until she meets Pete, a mysterious 10-year-old with no family and no home who claims to live in the woods with a giant, green dragon named Elliott. And from Pete's descriptions, Elliott seems remarkably similar to the dragon from Mr. Meacham's stories. With the help of Natalie, an 11-year-old girl whose father Jack owns the local lumber mill, Grace sets out to determine where Pete came from, where he belongs, and the truth about this dragon.

Similar in 80%

Walkabout (1971)

Plot Summary:

Under the pretense of having a picnic, a geologist takes his teenage daughter and 6-year-old son into the Australian outback and attempts to shoot them. When he fails, he turns the gun on himself, and the two city-bred children must contend with harsh wilderness alone. They are saved by a chance encounter with an Aborigine boy who shows them how to survive, and in the process underscores the disharmony between nature and modern life.

Similar in 77%

Leave No Trace (2018)

Plot Summary:

A father and daughter live a perfect but mysterious existence in Forest Park, a beautiful nature reserve near Portland, Oregon, rarely making contact with the world. But when a small mistake tips them off to authorities, they are sent on an increasingly erratic journey in search of a place to call their own.

Similar in 86%

Monsieur Ibrahim (2003)

Plot Summary:

Monsieur Ibrahim is a story about a young Jewish boy in Paris who meets an old Muslim Turkish grocery store owner. The film touches the themes of friendship and love as the old man is a father figure to the boy as he teaches him of the Koran. The film is based on a book of the popular book by the French author Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt.

Similar in 77%

Captain Fantastic (2016)

Plot Summary:

A father living in the forests of the Pacific Northwest with his six young kids tries to assimilate back into society.

Similar in 86%

White Water Summer (1987)

Plot Summary:

When the experienced guide Vic accompanies the city boy Alan and his three friends on their first wilderness experience, he not only hope to teach the four boys lessons about the wilderness, but about themselves. Vic pushes them to the limit. Soon after alienating the boys, Vic finds himself in desperate need of help and must rely on his students in order to survive.

Similar in 86%

The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)

Plot Summary:

A down-on-his-luck crab fisherman embarks on a journey to get a young man with Down syndrome to a professional wrestling school in rural North Carolina and away from the retirement home where he’s lived for the past two and a half years.

Similar in 75%

A Walk in the Woods (2015)

Plot Summary:

After spending two decades in England, Bill Bryson returns to the U.S., where he decides the best way to connect with his homeland is to hike the Appalachian Trail with one of his oldest friends.

Similar in 81%

Nebraska (2013)

Plot Summary:

An aging, booze-addled father takes a trip from Montana to Nebraska with his estranged son in order to claim what he believes to be a million-dollar sweepstakes prize.

Similar in 84%

The Kings of Summer (2013)

Plot Summary:

Joe Toy, on the verge of adolescence, finds himself increasingly frustrated by his single father, Frank's attempts to manage his life. Declaring his freedom once and for all, he escapes to a clearing in the woods with his best friend, Patrick, and a strange kid named Biaggio. He announces that they are going to build a house there, free from responsibility and parents. Once their makeshift abode is finished, the three young men find themselves masters of their own destiny, alone in the woods.

Similar in 83%

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Plot Summary:

Set on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965, Moonrise Kingdom tells the story of two twelve-year-olds who fall in love, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness. As various authorities try to hunt them down, a violent storm is brewing off-shore – and the peaceful island community is turned upside down in more ways than anyone can handle.

Similar in 81%

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

Plot Summary:

A timid magazine photo manager who lives life vicariously through daydreams embarks on a true-life adventure when a negative goes missing.

Similar in 76%

St. Vincent (2014)

Plot Summary:

A young boy whose parents just divorced finds an unlikely friend and mentor in the misanthropic, bawdy, hedonistic, war veteran who lives next door.

Similar in 81%

Stand by Me (1986)

Plot Summary:

After the death of a friend, a writer recounts a boyhood journey to find the body of a missing boy.

Similar in 86%

Hector and the Search for Happiness (2014)

Plot Summary:

Hector is a quirky psychiatrist who has become increasingly tired of his humdrum life. As he tells his girlfriend, Clara, he feels like a fraud: he hasn’t really tasted life, and yet he’s offering advice to patients who are just not getting any happier. So Hector decides to break out of his deluded and routine driven life. Armed with buckets of courage and child-like curiosity, he embarks on a global quest in hopes of uncovering the elusive secret formula for true happiness. And so begins a larger than life adventure with riotously funny results.

Similar in 80%

The Way Way Back (2013)

Plot Summary:

Over the course of his summer break, a teenager comes into his own thanks in part to the friendship he strikes up with one of the park's managers.

Similar in 76%

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Plot Summary:

A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.

Similar in 82%

Chef (2014)

Plot Summary:

When Chef Carl Casper suddenly quits his job at a prominent Los Angeles restaurant after refusing to compromise his creative integrity for its controlling owner, he is left to figure out what's next. Finding himself in Miami, he teams up with his ex-wife, his friend and his son to launch a food truck. Taking to the road, Chef Carl goes back to his roots to reignite his passion for the kitchen -- and zest for life and love.

Similar in 86%

Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

Plot Summary:

Loving but irresponsible dad Daniel Hillard, estranged from his exasperated spouse, is crushed by a court order allowing only weekly visits with his kids. When Daniel learns his ex needs a housekeeper, he gets the job -- disguised as an English nanny. Soon he becomes not only his children's best pal but the kind of parent he should have been from the start.

Similar in 77%

The Bucket List (2007)

Plot Summary:

Corporate billionaire Edward Cole and working class mechanic Carter Chambers are worlds apart. At a crossroads in their lives, they share a hospital room and discover they have two things in common: a desire to spend the time they have left doing everything they ever wanted to do and an unrealized need to come to terms with who they are. Together they embark on the road trip of a lifetime, becoming friends along the way and learning to live life to the fullest, with insight and humor.

Similar in 84%

Juno (2007)

Plot Summary:

A young girl named Juno gets herself pregnant and tries to stand on her own, but soon learns a few lessons about being grown up.

Similar in 81%

The Breakfast Club (1985)

Plot Summary:

Five high school students, all different stereotypes, meet in detention, where they pour their hearts out to each other, and discover how they have a lot more in common than they thought.

Similar in 84%

Flipped (2010)

Plot Summary:

When Juli meets Bryce in the second grade, she knows it's true love. After spending six years trying to convince Bryce the same, she's ready to give up - until he starts to reconsider.