Best movies like The Saddest Music in the World
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
In Depression-era Winnipeg, a legless beer baroness hosts a contest for the saddest music in the world, offering a grand prize of $25,000. Contestants flock in from around the globe. Representing America is Chester Kent, a theatre producer who thinks he's an American despite being Canadian; representing Serbia is his brother, Gavrilo the Great, who is succumbing to madness over the death of his son; and representing Canada is their father, a pathetic drunkard. As the competition builds toward its climax, these estranged characters are brought together to express their deep feelings of pain and ultimately give in to treachery.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Comedy, Musical
Country: Canada
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: surreal, atmospheric, breathtaking, black and white, lyrical, visual, light, talky, humorous, black comedy
Best tv shows and movies like The Saddest Music in the World (2003):
Similar in 83%
Starstruck (1982)
Plot Summary:
A new-wave extravaganza in which a young woman wants to become the next big singer with the help of her friends and despite the wishes of her working class family.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Musical
Country: Australia
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: realistic, erotic, psychotronic, offbeat, feel good, humorous, semi serious, independent film, light, romantic
Similar in 76%
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
Plot Summary:
Capturing John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in their electrifying element, 'A Hard Day's Night' is a wildly irreverent journey through this pastiche of a day in the life of The Beatles during 1964. The band have to use all their guile and wit to avoid the pursuing fans and press to reach their scheduled television performance, in spite of Paul's troublemaking grandfather and Ringo's arrest.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 47000
Genere: Comedy, Musical
Country: UK
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: humorous, feel good, mockumentary, not serious, funny, surreal, black and white, cult classic, hilarious, inspirational
Similar in 88%
The Singing Detective (2003)
Plot Summary:
From his hospital bed, a writer suffering from a skin disease hallucinates musical numbers and paranoid plots.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Comedy, Crime, Musical, Mystery
Country: USA
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: surreal, psychological, stylized, detective, disturbing, intense, atmospheric, semi serious, clever, mindfuck
Similar in 78%
Perfectly Normal (1990)
Plot Summary:
A cab driver and an opera fan strike up an unusual friendship.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 316
Genere: Comedy, Musical
Country: UK, Canada
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: independent film, offbeat, humorous, realistic, witty
Similar in 84%
Shock Treatment (1981)
Plot Summary:
Janet and Brad Majors, unhappily married, are separated after appearing on a game show. Janet becomes a superstar while Brad is thrown into a mental hospital. But what does fast food magnate Farley Flavors have up his sleeve?.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Comedy, Musical
Country: USA
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: surreal, cult classic, allegory, spoof, horror musical, black comedy, horror comedy, dark comedy, offbeat, humorous
Similar in 82%
Archangel (1990)
Plot Summary:
A surrealistic film in which a strangely assorted group of people come together in the Russian Arctic at the height of the revolution and World War One.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance, War
Country: Canada
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: black and white, mindfuck, art house, visual, cult classic, experimental, expressionism, silent, atmospheric, offbeat
Similar in 82%
Blue Hawaii (1961)
Plot Summary:
Chad Gates has just gotten out of the Army, and is happy to be back in Hawaii with his surf-board, his beach buddies, and his girlfriend.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Comedy, Musical
Country: USA
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: light, melancholic, stylized, intense, feel good, humorous, semi serious, touching, psychotronic, retro
Similar in 85%
Without You I'm Nothing (1990)
Plot Summary:
Sandra Bernhard stars in a studio version of her off-Broadway show, blending re-enactments of the original show's pieces with concept vignettes and 'testimonials' to underscore the relationship between a performer and an audience.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 657
Genere: Comedy, Musical
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: independent film, clever, offbeat, humorous, realistic, witty, cynical, not serious, semi serious, biting
Similar in 85%
Frankie and Johnny (1966)
Plot Summary:
Elvis plays Johnny, a riverboat entertainer with a big gambling problem. Donna Douglas plays Johnny's girl, Frankie. A fortune teller tells Johnny how he can change his luck. Enter a new lady luck played by Nancy Kovack and the cat fight begins.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Musical, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: psychotronic, feel good, humorous, realistic, semi serious, light, road movie, sexy, clever, bad ending
Similar in 77%
True Stories (1986)
Plot Summary:
A small but growing Texas town, filled with strange and musical characters, celebrates its sesquicentennial and converge on a local parade and talent show.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Comedy, Musical
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: cult classic, surreal, postmodern, parody, offbeat, feel good, humorous, witty, not serious, absurd
Similar in 84%
Viva Las Vegas (1964)
Plot Summary:
Lucky Jackson arrives in town with his car literally in tow ready for the first Las Vegas Grand Prix - once he has the money to buy an engine. He gets the cash easily enough but mislays it when the pretty swimming pool manageress takes his mind off things. It seems he will lose both race and girl, problems made more difficult by rivalry from Elmo Mancini, fellow racer and womaniser.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Comedy, Musical
Country: USA
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: retro, psychotronic, hilarious, offbeat, feel good, humorous, realistic, semi serious, entertaining, exciting
Similar in 76%
Fancy Dancing (2002)
Plot Summary:
A composer finds love with a co-worker after taking a job at his uncle's advertising agency.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 105
Genere: Comedy, Musical
Country: UK, Canada
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, humorous, captivating, emotional, semi serious, feel good, realistic
Similar in 87%
The Last of the Blonde Bombshells (2000)
Plot Summary:
After Elizabeth's husband dies, she begins to play her tenor saxophone again, and remembers when she was 15 and a member of the Blonde Bombshells, an all-girl (with one exception) swing band. Accompanied by the exception and urged on by her grand-daughter, Elizabeth hunts up all the old members of the band and urges them to perform, and in doing so, learns more than she knew about the band, its members, the roses on the drum set, and herself--the last of the Blonde Bombshells.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Music
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: sentimental, humorous, realistic, touching, semi serious, fairy tale
Similar in 76%
Not on the Lips (2003)
Plot Summary:
A musical drawing room farce set in Paris in October, 1925. Gilberte, in middle-age, flirts with men but loves her husband Georges, wishing he were more demonstrative. He's negotiating a deal with an American, Eric Thomson, who turns out to be Gilberte's first husband from an annulled and secret stateside marriage. Along with her sister Arlette, Gilberte begs Eric not to tell Georges about the marriage. Meanwhile, a young artist, Charly, pursues Gilberte while Arlette tries to match him with the young Huguette, who loves him. Will Eric play along or try to re-win Gilberte's affection? Can Gilberte play one off against another? And who will manage to kiss whom on the lips?.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Musical, Romance
Country: Switzerland, France
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: feel good, humorous, realistic, witty, semi serious, clever, offbeat, stylized
Similar in 82%
Death of a Dynasty (2003)
Plot Summary:
A story which centers around Dave Katz, a journalist at a hip-hop magazine who is sent on assignment to uncover the often comedic underworld of Roc-a-Fella Records run by Damon Dash and Jay-Z.
IMDB Rating: 3.6
IMDB Votes: 414
Genere: Musical, Comedy
Country: USA
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: realistic, humorous, talky, semi serious, independent film, mockumentary, witty
Similar in 78%
The American Astronaut (2001)
Plot Summary:
Samual Curtis's first mission in this bizarre science fiction musical comedy requires him to take a cat to a saloon on an asteroid. There, he meets his former dance partner (the Blueberry Pirate) and collects his payment: a device capable of producing a Real Live Girl. Including music by alternative rock group The Billy Nayer Show, this film began life as a live show with a loyal following.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Musical, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Country: USA
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: surreal, black and white, atmospheric, lyrical, cult classic, talky, humorous, semi serious, independent film, art house
Similar in 89%
The Ruling Class (1972)
Plot Summary:
When the Earl of Gurney dies in a cross-dressing accident, his schizophrenic son, Jack, inherits the Gurney estate. Jack is not the average nobleman; he sings and dances across the estate and thinks he is Jesus reincarnated. Believing that Jack is mentally unfit to own the estate, the Gurney family plots to steal Jack's inheritance. As their outrageous schemes fail, the family strives to cure Jack of his bizarre behavior, with disastrous results.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Musical
Country: UK
Duration: 154 min
Plot tags: surreal, dark comedy, humorous, satirical, disturbing, talky, black comedy, semi serious, psychological, cult classic
Similar in 87%
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
Plot Summary:
Life's questions are 'answered' in a series of outrageous vignettes, beginning with a staid London insurance company which transforms before our eyes into a pirate ship. Then there's the National Health doctors who try to claim a healthy liver from a still-living donor. The world's most voracious glutton brings the art of vomiting to new heights before his spectacular demise.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 124000
Genere: Comedy, Musical
Country: UK
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: parody, funny, surreal, philosophical, absurd, spoof, existential, hilarious, black comedy, sketch comedy
Similar in 84%
Zachariah (1971)
Plot Summary:
Two gunfighters separate and experience surreal visions on their journey through the west.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 766
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Musical, Western
Country: Mexico, USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: avant garde, psychedelic, independent film, exciting, atmospheric, offbeat, humorous, captivating, realistic, surreal
Similar in 84%
Romance & Cigarettes (2005)
Plot Summary:
Down-and-dirty musical love story set in the world of the working class. Nick is an ironworker who builds and repairs bridges. He's married to Kitty, a dressmaker, a strong and gentle woman with whom he has three daughters. He is carrying on a torrid affair with a redheaded woman named Tula. Nick is basically a good, hardworking man driven forward by will and blinded by his urges.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 13000
Genere: Comedy, Musical, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: surreal, sentimental, touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious, light, captivating, romantic, anamorphic
Similar in 86%
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Plot Summary:
Hansel Schmidt, is a young East German boy, born and raised during the Cold War in communist East Berlin. In his 20s, he meets Luther Robinson, an older American soldier, who falls in love with Hansel and the two decide to marry, which will allow Hansel to leave communist East Germany for the West. But, in order to marry, Hansel must undergo a sex-change. However, the procedure does not go perfectly and Hansel becomes not a trans woman, but a 'genderqueer', Hedwig. Back in the USA, on their first wedding anniversary, Luther leaves Hedwig for another man. On that same day the news headlines were of the fall of the Berlin Wall and freedom. Hedwig tours the US with her rock band and relates her life story while following her ex-boyfriend/band-mate Tommy Speck (to whom she gives the stage name "Tommy Gnosis"), who stole her songs and rose to fame.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 37000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Music, Musical
Country: Canada, USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: emotional, cult classic, enigmatic, melancholic, lyrical, sentimental, semi serious, dark comedy, offbeat, stylized
Similar in 77%
Careful (1992)
Plot Summary:
In the remote Alpine village of Tolzbad at the turn of the century, people talk quietly and restrain their movements lest avalanches come and kill them. This atmosphere lends itself to repressed emotions - shown through the parallel stories of butler student Johann lusting after his mother (an old flame of the mysterious Count Knotkers) and Klara's attraction to her father (who lusts after his other daughter), leading to duels and suicidal plunges galore. All this is shot in the style of an early German sound film, complete with intertitles, deliberately crackly soundtrack and 'hand-tinted' colour effects.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Horror, Romance
Country: Canada
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: surreal, cult classic, atmospheric, experimental, disturbing, stylized, mindfuck, avant garde, mind bending, psychedelic
Similar in 81%
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
Plot Summary:
In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 46000
Genere: Comedy
Country: France, Italy, Spain
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: surreal, disturbing, atmospheric, talky, humorous, art house, philosophical, satirical, absurd, meditative
Similar in 86%
The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
Plot Summary:
Bourgeois convention is demolished in Luis Buñuel’s surrealist gem. Featuring an elegant soiree with guests seated at toilet bowls, poker-playing monks using religious medals as chips, and police officers looking for a missing girl who is right under their noses, this perverse, playfully absurd comedy of non sequiturs deftly compiles many of the themes that preoccupied Buñuel throughout his career—from the hypocrisy of conventional morality to the arbitrariness of social arrangements.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 17000
Genere: Comedy
Country: France, Italy
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: surreal, humorous, art house, atmospheric, disturbing, meditative, talky, dark comedy, thought provoking, witty
Similar in 82%
Bye Bye Birdie (1963)
Plot Summary:
A singer goes to a small town for a performance before he is drafted.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Comedy, Musical
Country: USA
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: funny, retro, black and white, hilarious, feel good, humorous, realistic, semi serious, satirical, vintage
Similar in 89%
Freak Dance (2010)
Plot Summary:
A spoiled rich girl who wants to be a dancer finds herself caught into between two rival dance groups set to do battle at an underground competition.
IMDB Rating: 4.5
IMDB Votes: 358
Genere: Comedy, Musical
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: humorous, not serious, light, captivating, parody, realistic, alternative comedy
Similar in 80%
Breakfast of Champions (1999)
Plot Summary:
A portrait of a fictional town in the mid west that is home to a group of idiosyncratic and slightly neurotic characters. Dwayne Hoover is a wealthy car dealer-ship owner that's on the brink of suicide and is losing touch with reality.
IMDB Rating: 4.5
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Comedy
Country: USA
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: surreal, talky, black comedy, dark comedy, tragicomedy, humorous, witty, cult classic, intense, independent film
Similar in 82%
Die, Mommie, Die! (2003)
Plot Summary:
You slipped into my life as easily as vermouth into a glass of gin, purrs reclusive singing star Angela Arden. Arden is not only haunted by a secret, she's treated like dirt by her louse of a husband, her snoopy maid, and her petulant daughter. Only her mentally defective son and a well-endowed gigolo treat her with love and affection. Is it any wonder she takes drastic action to improve her life?.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: humorous, witty, melancholic, satirical, light, parody, funny, captivating, spoof, slasher
Similar in 88%
Cry-Baby (1990)
Plot Summary:
A prim and proper schoolgirl goes against her mother's wishes when she dates a motorcycle-riding juvenile delinquent.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 64000
Genere: Comedy, Musical
Country: USA
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: humorous, sentimental, light, parody, teen, feel good, surreal, cult classic, dark comedy, retro
Similar in 84%
Spectacular! (2009)
Plot Summary:
A high school choir is fading in popularity, as it continues to lose most of its' members one by one. A wannabe rock singer is convinced to join the choir, in hopes of winning the upcoming competition and cash prize.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Family, Musical
Country: Canada, USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: humorous, captivating, entertaining, light, feel good, funny, teen, sentimental, realistic, semi serious