Best movies like Wish You Were Here
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
In a staid English seaside town after the Second World War, young Lynda grows up with her widowed father and younger sister. Rebellious Lynda has been swearing constantly from an early age. At sixteen, she becomes more exhibitionist and seeks out sexual encounters challenging the prevailing lower-middle class attitudes to sex. She eventually becomes pregnant by an acquaintance of her father.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: grindhouse, humorous, sentimental, realistic, semi serious, independent film, black comedy, dark comedy, light, sexy
Best tv shows and movies like Wish You Were Here (1987):
Similar in 78%
The Little Thief (1988)
Plot Summary:
In a small town in post-World-War-II France, an unhappy sixteen-year-old (Janine Castang) tries to escape her dreary situation by any means at her disposal. Three successive friends (Michel Davenne, a married lover; Raoul, a fellow thief; Mauricette Dargelos, a photographer and fellow prisoner) help her learn from her mistakes.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: anthology, sentimental, touching, serious, realistic, intellectual, fake documentary
Similar in 78%
Rita, Sue and Bob Too! (1987)
Plot Summary:
Realistic story of working class Yorkshire life. Two schoolgirls have a sexual fling with a married man. Serious and light-hearted by turns. Rita, Sue And Bob Too was adapted by Andrea Dunbar from two of her own controversial plays. Rita (Siobhan Finneran) and Sue (Michelle Holmes) are two teenagers living on a run-down council estate in Bradford who both share a job babysitting for Bob (George Costigan) and Michelle's (Lesley Sharp) children. Whilst giving them a lift home one night, Bob decides to take Rita and Sue up to a deserted, country-side landscape. Clearly knowing what he has in mind, Rita and Sue are only too happy to oblige and both have a sexual encounter with him that becomes a regular occurrence. Despite the blatant politically-incorrect nature of the film, this does emerge as a somewhat controversial, though enduringly amusing film that has a sharp, gritty undertone.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: independent film, sex comedy, avant garde, cult classic, sexy, humorous, realistic, witty, semi serious, hot
Similar in 75%
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974)
Plot Summary:
The younger son of a working-class Jewish family in Montreal, Duddy Kravitz yearns to make a name for himself in society. This film chronicles his short and dubious rise to power, as well as his changing relationships with family and friends. Along the way the film explores the themes of anti-semitism and the responsibilities which come with adulthood.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: sad, clever, humorous, realistic, witty, cynical, semi serious, biting, semi autobiographical, suspense
Similar in 77%
Skipped Parts (2000)
Plot Summary:
A woman and her son must leave a small South Carolina town because of her wild behavior.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: humorous, sincere, witty, semi serious, realistic, crying, independent film, sexy, touching, depressing
Similar in 79%
The Vicious Kind (2009)
Plot Summary:
A man tries to warn his brother away from the new girlfriend he brings home during Thanksgiving, but ends up becoming infatuated with her in the process.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: independent film, black comedy, sentimental, realistic, humorous, semi serious, indie film, sincere, erotic, melancholic
Similar in 87%
Metroland (1997)
Plot Summary:
After ten years absence Toni, Chris's best friend, suddenly reappears in London to bring chaos and doubt into Chris's calm, tranquil, slightly boring, predictable life. Chris starts to remember his carefree youth as a photographer in Paris when he lived with and enjoyed a torrid affair with Annick. It was also in Paris that he first met and fell in love with Marion. The temptations and pressure exerted on Chris by Toni to return to their former carefree life of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll soon starts to have an impact on Chris's marriage. He starts to question his values, his lifestyle choices and his relationship with Marion and even suspects her of starting an affair with Toni whom she dislikes! Eventually circumstances come to a head and Chris is forced to decide whether to follow Toni back to the hedonistic, irresponsible life of his youth or face the harsh realities of the present and stay with Marion.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Spain, France, UK
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: cult classic, sexual, comedy drama, sentimental, touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious, crying, weeping
Similar in 84%
An Awfully Big Adventure (1995)
Plot Summary:
Liverpool. 1947. A star-struck young girl learns about the grown-up world of the theater.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: UK
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: bleak, clever, offbeat, humorous, realistic, witty, semi serious, biting, crying, independent film
Similar in 76%
Manny & Lo (1996)
Plot Summary:
A pregnant teen and her younger sister run away from foster homes and kidnap a woman whom they believe can help with the pregnancy.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: humorous, road movie, feel good, cult classic, independent film, clever, touching, realistic, semi serious, black comedy
Similar in 86%
Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael (1990)
Plot Summary:
Movie star Roxy Carmichael is abandoning the bright lights of Hollywood, Calif. and returning to her small Ohio hometown -- at least long enough to dedicate a city building. And now the whole town of Clyde is bracing for Carmichael's return, most of all her now-married old flame Denton Webb and troubled teen Dinky Bossetti. An orphan with few friends, Dinky is convinced that Carmichael is her birth mother, and that the actress will reclaim her when she returns.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: touching, humorous, semi serious, realistic, independent film, sexy, offbeat, feel good, teen comedy
Similar in 78%
These Girls (2005)
Plot Summary:
Based on the humorously edgy play by Vivienne Laxdal, These Girls is the story of three teenage girls who, in turn, seduce and then attempt to share Keith, an older married man. It is a tale of innocence, jealousy and friendship told as a provocative coming-of-age story.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: humorous, witty, semi serious, realistic, sex comedy
Similar in 82%
Picture Day (2012)
Plot Summary:
A rebellious teenager forced to repeat her last year of high school is caught between adolescence and adulthood - and between two very different male admirers.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: touching, humorous, realistic, melancholic, semi serious
Similar in 86%
Hardboiled Egg (1997)
Plot Summary:
The story of Piero, from when he was a kid to fatherhood, over the background of the town of Livorno, Tuscany, where the director Virzì was born.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sentimental, humorous, captivating, realistic, gloomy, semi serious
Similar in 85%
Turning Green (2005)
Plot Summary:
Set in late 1970s Ireland, it tells the story of 16-year-old James Powers, an American who finds himself lost after his mother dies and he is forced to live with his three Irish aunts. Displaced and depressed, he longs for a way to make it back to America. One lucky weekend in London, James discovers pornography and, desperate for cash, he decides to sell them back in Ireland. His success spreads wildly. After finding a possible way home, he must decide where home really is, and finds that one's place in the world is all a state of mind.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 480
Genere: Drama, Comedy
Country: USA, Ireland
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, realistic, humorous, semi serious, independent film
Similar in 77%
The Go-Getter (2007)
Plot Summary:
When his mother dies, a teenager takes a road-trip in a stolen car to find his long-lost brother. Along the way he discovers a profound connection with the car-owner and with himself as well.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: road movie, enigmatic, melancholic, ironic, semi serious, realistic, inspirational, cult classic, comedy drama, sentimental
Similar in 85%
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.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 71 min
Plot tags: touching, humorous, emotional, semi serious, funny, light, feel good, captivating, entertaining, realistic
Similar in 90%
Hick (2011)
Plot Summary:
A pistol-packing teen meets an unstable rebel and a cocaine-snorting drifter as she hitchhikes her way out West.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 21000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: touching, realistic, independent film, captivating, semi serious, road movie, sweet, sad, dramatic, black comedy
Similar in 88%
Somers Town (2008)
Plot Summary:
Two teenagers, both newcomers to London, forge an unlikely friendship over the course of a hot summer. Tomo (Thomas Turgoose) is a runaway from Nottingham; Marek (Piotr Jagiello) lives in the district of Somers Town, between King's Cross and Euston stations, where his dad is working on a new rail link.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 71 min
Plot tags: touching, realistic, semi serious, black and white, social, humorous, witty
Similar in 89%
Diggers (2006)
Plot Summary:
Diggers is a coming-of-age story directed by Katherine Dieckmann. It portrays four working-class friends who grow up in The Hamptons, on the South Shore of Long Island, New York, as clam diggers in 1976. Their fathers were clam diggers as well as their grandfathers before them. They must cope with and learn to face the changing times in both their personal lives and their neighborhood.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: humorous, touching, realistic, witty, semi serious, period piece, independent film, biting, suspense
Similar in 78%
Introducing the Dwights (2007)
Plot Summary:
The shy son of an aging comedienne tries to find a balance between his demanding home life, his new girlfriend, and his mother's second chance at fame.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Australia
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: humorous, semi serious, sentimental, feel good, realistic, entertaining, biting, crying, suspense
Similar in 87%
Gone Too Far! (2013)
Plot Summary:
GONE TOO FAR follows two estranged teenage brothers over the course of a single day as they meet for the first time, and struggle to accept each other for who they are. Yemi can't wait for his big brother to join him on the estate in Peckham - but when Ikudayisi arrives from Nigeria wearing socks and sandals Yemi questions both his judgement and his African heritage. A day on the estate filled with danger and excitement teaches both of them the values of family and self respect.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 422
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK, Nigeria
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: uplifting, humorous, semi serious, captivating, psychological, sentimental, touching, realistic
Similar in 77%
Cemetery Junction (2010)
Plot Summary:
In 1970s England, three blue-collar friends spend their days joking, drinking, fighting and chasing girls. Freddie wants to leave their working-class world but cool, charismatic Bruce and lovable loser Snork are happy with life the way it is. When Freddie gets a new job as a door-to-door salesman and bumps into his old school sweetheart Julie, the gang are forced to make choices that will change their lives for ever.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 24000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: witty, inspirational, stylized, funny, humorous, talky, semi serious, melancholic, atmospheric, clever
Similar in 75%
West Is West (2010)
Plot Summary:
Comedy sequel to "East is East". Manchester, North of England, 1975. The now much diminished, but still claustrophobic and dysfunctional, Khan family continues to struggle for survival. Sajid, the youngest Khan, the runt of the litter, is deep in pubescent crisis under heavy assault both from his father's tyrannical insistence on Pakistani tradition, and from the fierce bullies in the schoolyard. So, in a last, desperate attempt to 'sort him out', his father decides to pack him off to Mrs Khan No 1 and family in the Punjab, the wife and daughters he had abandoned 35 years earlier. It is not long before Ella Khan (Mrs Khan No2) with a small entourage from Salford, England, swiftly follows to sort out the mess, past and present.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: touching, feel good, humorous, witty, sentimental, semi serious, realistic
Similar in 82%
Anita & Me (2002)
Plot Summary:
Meena, a 12-year-old living in a mining village in the English Midlands in 1972, is the daughter of Indian parents who've come to England to give her a better life. This idyllic existence is upset by the arrival in the village of Anita Rutter and her dysfunctional family.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, realistic, humorous, semi serious
Similar in 77%
Life Is Sweet (1990)
Plot Summary:
Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, leads aerobics at a primary school, jokes like a vaudevillian, agrees to waitress at a friend's new restaurant and dotes on Andy, a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, and with a drunken friend, buys a broken down lunch wagon. Natalie, with short neat hair and a snappy, droll manner, is a plumber; she has a holiday planned in America, but little else. Last is Nicola, odd man out: a snarl, big glasses, cigarette, mussed hair, jittery fingers, bulimic, jobless, and unhappy. How they interact and play out family conflict and love is the film's subject.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: sentimental, independent film, compassionate, funny, sweet, melancholic, humorous, sincere, realistic, talky
Similar in 83%
The Last of the High Kings (1996)
Plot Summary:
It is 1977, Dublin rocks to the music of Thin Lizzy and the world is stunned by the death of Elvis Presley. Frankie, caught between acne and adulthood, has just completed his final exams in school. Convinced he will fail, he survives the summer organising a beach party, having lustful thoughts about two girls he believes are unobtainable and fending off the advances from a visiting American family friend, all whilst coping with his oddball family.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Ireland, Denmark, UK
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: humorous, light, talky, sentimental, touching, feel good, semi serious, sincere, independent film, realistic
Similar in 80%
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.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: touching, sentimental, humorous, semi serious, independent film, teen, realistic
Similar in 84%
Housekeeping (1987)
Plot Summary:
In the Pacific Northwest during the 1950s, two young sisters whose mother has abandoned them wind up living with their Aunt Sylvie, whose views of the world and its conventions don't quite live up to most people's expectations.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: sad, atmospheric, realistic, thought provoking, sentimental, touching, feel good, humorous, semi serious, light
Similar in 89%
Ghost World (2001)
Plot Summary:
Two quirky, cynical teenaged girls try to figure out what to do with their lives after high school graduation. After they play a prank on an eccentric, middle aged record collector, one of them befriends him, which causes a rift in the girls' friendship.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 125000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA, UK, Germany
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: black comedy, thought provoking, independent film, melancholic, teen, realistic, cult classic, atmospheric, indie film, humorous
Similar in 86%
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.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: dark comedy, humorous, disturbing, sincere, semi serious, teen, independent film, clever, black comedy, period piece
Similar in 86%
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.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 543000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: funny, touching, sweet, sentimental, feel good, teen, humorous, realistic, comedy drama, cute