Best movies like Riding in Cars with Boys

Similar in 77%

Home Fries (1998)

Plot Summary:

Dorian and Angus chase down their womanizing stepfather with a helicopter, frightening him to death. In his effort to cover their tracks, Dorian begins investigating his stepfather's mistress, Sally. She works at a fast-food drive-through, she's pregnant and Dorian quickly falls in love with her. Unfortunately, his scheming mother wants Sally dead. And Sally isn't sure she wants Dorian to be her child's father and also his brother.

Similar in 81%

The Bad Mother's Handbook (2007)

Plot Summary:

Karen Cooper wants to domineer her family and believes she's its pillar. In fact she does everything wrong. Thus she messes up all their lives and futures, rather then help her loved-ones.

Similar in 75%

Sunshine Cleaning (2008)

Plot Summary:

A single mother and her slacker sister find an unexpected way to turn their lives around in the off-beat dramatic comedy. In order to raise the tuition to send her young son to private school the mom starts an unusual business – a biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service.

Similar in 78%

Crooklyn (1994)

Plot Summary:

From Spike Lee comes this vibrant semi-autobiographical portrait of a school-teacher, her stubborn jazz-musician husband and their five kids living in '70s Brooklyn.

Similar in 89%

Beaches (1988)

Plot Summary:

A privileged rich debutante and a cynical struggling entertainer share a turbulent, but strong childhood friendship over the years.

Similar in 85%

Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)

Plot Summary:

Biography of Loretta Lynn, a country and western singer that came from poverty to fame.

Similar in 83%

American Splendor (2003)

Plot Summary:

An original mix of fiction and reality illuminates the life of comic book hero everyman Harvey Pekar.

Similar in 88%

Where the Heart Is (2000)

Plot Summary:

Novalee Nation is a 17-year-old Tennessee transient who has to grow up in a hurry when she's left pregnant and abandoned by her boyfriend on a roadside in Sequoyah, Okla., and takes refuge in the friendly aisles of Wal-Mart. In short order, some eccentric, kindly strangers "adopt" Novalee and her infant daughter, helping them buck the odds and build a new life.

Similar in 85%

Anywhere But Here (1999)

Plot Summary:

In this adaptation of the Mona Simpson novel, single mother Adele August is bad with money, and even worse when it comes to making decisions. Her straight-laced daughter, Ann, is a successful high school student with Ivy League aspirations. When Adele decides to pack up and move the two of them from the Midwest to Beverly Hills, Calif., to pursue her dreams of Hollywood success, Ann grows frustrated with her mother's irresponsible and impulsive ways.

Similar in 82%

Angela's Ashes (1999)

Plot Summary:

Based on the best selling autobiography by Irish expat Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes follows the experiences of young Frankie and his family as they try against all odds to escape the poverty endemic in the slums of pre-war Limerick. The film opens with the family in Brooklyn, but following the death of one of Frankie's siblings, they return home, only to find the situation there even worse. Prejudice against Frankie's Northern Irish father makes his search for employment in the Republic difficult despite his having fought for the IRA, and when he does find money, he spends the money on drink.

Similar in 84%

This Boy's Life (1993)

Plot Summary:

In 1957, a son and mother flee the East and an abusive boyfriend to find a new life, and end up in Seattle, where the mother meets a polite garage mechanic. The boy continually gets into trouble by hanging out with the wrong crowd. The mom marries the mechanic, but they soon find out that he's an abusive and unreasoning alcoholic, and they struggle to maintain hope in an impossible situation as the boy grows up with plans to escape the small town by any means possible. Based on a true story by Tobias Wolff.

Similar in 78%

Precious (2009)

Plot Summary:

Set in Harlem in 1987, Claireece "Precious" Jones is a 16-year-old African American girl born into a life no one would want. She's pregnant for the second time by her absent father; at home, she must wait hand and foot on her mother, an angry woman who abuses her emotionally and physically. School is chaotic and Precious has reached the ninth grade with good marks and a secret--she can't read.

Similar in 82%

Dangerous Minds (1995)

Plot Summary:

Former Marine Louanne Johnson lands a gig teaching in a pilot program for bright but underachieving teens at a notorious inner-city high school. After having a terrible first day, she decides she must throw decorum to the wind. When Johnson returns to the classroom, she does so armed with a no-nonsense attitude informed by her military training and a fearless determination to better the lives of her students -- no matter what the cost.

Similar in 81%

Now and Then (1995)

Plot Summary:

Waxing nostalgic about the bittersweet passage from childhood to puberty in this tender coming-of-age tale, four childhood girlfriends -- Teeny, Chrissy, Samantha and Roberta -- recall the magical summer of 1970. During their walk down memory lane, they reconcile experiences with boys, secrets, bullies and more.

Similar in 84%

She's Having a Baby (1988)

Plot Summary:

Jake and Kristy Briggs are newlyweds. Being young, they are perhaps a bit unprepared for the full reality of marriage and all that it (and their parents) expect from them. Do they want babies? Their parents certainly want them to. Is married life all that there is? Things certainly aren't helped by Jake's friend Davis, who always seems to turn up just in time to put a spanner in the works.

Similar in 90%

Steel Magnolias (1989)

Plot Summary:

This heart wrenching drama is about a beauty shop, in Louisana owned by Truvy, and the tragedies of all of her clients.

Similar in 76%

Parenthood (1989)

Plot Summary:

The story of the Buckman family and friends, attempting to bring up their children. They suffer/enjoy all the events that occur: estranged relatives, the "black sheep" of the family, the eccentrics, the skeletons in the closet, and the rebellious teenagers.

Similar in 88%

Girl in Progress (2012)

Plot Summary:

As single mom Grace juggles work, bills, and her affair with a married doctor, her daughter, Ansiedad, plots a shortcut to adulthood after finding inspiration in the coming-of-age stories she's reading for school.

Similar in 77%

The Women (2008)

Plot Summary:

The story centers on a group of gossipy, high-society women who spend their days at the beauty salon and haunting fashion shows. The sweet, happily-wedded Mary Haines finds her marriage in trouble when shop girl Crystal Allen gets her hooks into Mary's man.

Similar in 81%

Real Women Have Curves (2002)

Plot Summary:

Freshly graduated from high school, Ana receives a full scholarship to Columbia University. Her very traditional, old-world parents feel that now is the time for Ana to help provide for the family, not the time for college.

Similar in 88%

How to Deal (2003)

Plot Summary:

Mandy Moore stars as Halley, a young hip high school student who's convinced true love doesn't exist based on the crazy relationships around her. Her mother is divorcing her father who is dating a younger woman Halley can't stand. Her crazed sister is planning a wedding but has second thoughts and her best friend has fallen madly in love for the first time leaving Halley to feel even more alone.

Similar in 85%

Slums of Beverly Hills (1998)

Plot Summary:

In 1976, a lower-middle-class teenager struggles to cope living with her neurotic family of nomads on the outskirts of Beverly Hills.

Similar in 87%

My Girl (1991)

Plot Summary:

Vada Sultenfuss is obsessed with death. Her mother is dead, and her father runs a funeral parlor. She is also in love with her English teacher, and joins a poetry class over the summer just to impress him. Thomas J., her best friend, is "allergic to everything", and sticks with Vada despite her hangups. When Vada's father hires Shelly, and begins to fall for her, things take a turn to the worse.

Similar in 90%

Mr. Church (2016)

Plot Summary:

A unique friendship develops when a little girl and her dying mother inherit a cook - Mr. Church. What begins as an arrangement that should only last six months, instead spans fifteen years.

Similar in 85%

Terms of Endearment (1983)

Plot Summary:

Aurora and Emma are mother and daughter who march to different drummers. Beginning with Emma's marriage, Aurora shows how difficult and loving she can be. The movie covers several years of their lives as each finds different reasons to go on living and find joy. Aurora's interludes with Garrett Breedlove, retired astronaut and next door neighbor are quite striking.

Similar in 89%

Girl, Interrupted (1999)

Plot Summary:

Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.

Similar in 82%

Stepmom (1998)

Plot Summary:

Jackie is a divorced mother of two. Isabel is the career minded girlfriend of Jackie’s ex-husband Luke, forced into the role of unwelcome stepmother to their children. But when Jackie discovers she is ill, both women realise they must put aside their differences to find a common ground and celebrate life to the fullest, while they have the chance.

Similar in 89%

50 First Dates (2004)

Plot Summary:

Henry is a player skilled at seducing women. But when this veterinarian meets Lucy, a girl with a quirky problem when it comes to total recall, he realizes it's possible to fall in love all over again…and again, and again. That's because the delightful Lucy has no short-term memory, so Henry must woo her day after day until he finally sweeps her off her feet.

Similar in 87%

Grey Gardens (2009)

Plot Summary:

Based on the life stories of the eccentric aunt and first cousin of Jackie Onassis raised as Park Avenue débutantes but who withdrew from New York society, taking shelter at their Long Island summer home, "Grey Gardens." As their wealth and contact with the outside world dwindled, so did their grasp on reality.

Similar in 79%

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.