20 best movies like How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998)

Angie lives in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, N.Y. and dreams of a better life than everyone she knows. When she finds that she is pregnant by her boyfriend Vinnie, she decides that she will have the baby, but not Vinnie as a husband. This turns the entire neighborhood upside down and starts her on a journey of self discovery. This journey includes her family, a new lover and her life. Even her best friend Tina has trouble understanding Angie. Written by Tony Fontana

A pregnant New York social worker begins to develop romantic feelings for her gay best friend, and decides she'd rather raise her child with him, much to the dismay of her overbearing boyfriend.

Four young people navigate the suburban wonderland of metro-Detroit looking for love and adventure on the last weekend of summer.

New York City. Melvin Udall, a cranky, bigoted, obsessive-compulsive writer, finds his life turned upside down when neighboring gay artist Simon is hospitalized and his dog is entrusted to Melvin. In addition, Carol, the only waitress who will tolerate him, must leave work to care for her sick son, making it impossible for Melvin to eat breakfast.

A Russian circus visits the US. A clown wants to defect, but doesn't have the nerve. His saxophone playing friend however comes to the decision to defect in the middle of Bloomingdales. He is befriended by the black security guard and falls in love with the Italian immigrant from behind the perfume counter. We follow his life as he works his way through the American dream and tries to find work as a musician.

When Johnny is released from prison following a forgery charge, he quickly lands a job as a short-order cook at a New York diner. Following a brief fling with waitress Cora, Frankie develops an attraction for Cora's friend and fellow waitress Frankie. While Frankie resists Johnny's charms initially, she eventually relents when her best friend, Tim, persuades her to give Johnny a chance.

Eddy and Stuart share two-thirds of a dormitory suite. Due to bureaucratic error, a woman named Alex is added to their room. At first, relations among the three are tense. Soon, however, Alex falls for Eddy, and Stuart lusts after Alex.

A clinically depressed teenager gets a new start after he checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward.

Deals with the lives of the three Irish Catholic McMullen brothers from Long Island, New York, over three months, as they grapple with basic ideas and values — love, sex, marriage, religion and family — in the 1990s. Directed, written, produced by and starring Edward Burns.

A working girl from New Jersey looks for love with a fast-lane Manhattan salesman from Queens.

Dorian realizes he is gay in his final year of high school. He meets another gay youth locally, but remains confused. He starts therapy, then resorts to confession in the Church, and finally comes out to his brother. Dorian then decides to come out to his father; he gets kicked out of the house.

ARRANGED centers on the friendship between an Orthodox Jewish woman and a Muslim woman who meet as first-year teachers at a public school in Brooklyn. Over the course of the year they learn they share much in common - not least of which is that they are both going through the process of arranged marriages.

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.

Four young women continue the journey toward adulthood that began with "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." Now three years later, these lifelong friends embark on separate paths for their first year of college and the summer beyond, but remain in touch by sharing their experiences with each other.

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.

During a snowy winter in the small fictional town of Knight's Ridge, Massachusetts, a group of lifelong buddies hang out, drink and struggle to connect with the women who affect their decisions, dreams and desires.

Bill Dancer and his young companion Curly Sue are the classic homeless folks with hearts of gold. Their scams are aimed not at turning a profit, but at getting enough to eat. When they scam the rich and beautiful Grey Ellison into believing she backed her Mercedes into Bill, they're only hoping for a free meal. But Grey is touched, and over the objections of her snotty fiancé.

Electrician Gus gets the chance to fulfill a childhood dream by buying an old bowling-alley with some of his friends.

For 16 years Miss Bentley has been spending April at an elegant hillside villa on Lake Como. This year, 1937, her London society artist father has recently died and the only other English-speaking guests are brash Americans. Then Major Wilshaw arrives. He suggests they meet for cocktails and Miss Bentley stands him up -- not even thinking about it -- as she helps the new nanny of an Italian family settle in. Miss Beaumont, a tall, young American who has dropped out of finishing school in Switzerland, is bored and finds some amusement in flirting with the major, whose libido is awakened for the first time since before the great war. And Miss Bentley now finds more about the major to admire than his ears.

As four friends prepare for life after high school, different challenges bring about turning points in each of their lives. The dramas unfold and resolve at their local rollerskating rink, Cascade.

Summer of 1963. Carson is getting married to her boyfriend so her friends Melaina, Pudge and Luanne take her to Myrtle Beach for one last irresponsible weekend.

A quirky teen with a penchant for war reenactments, Kelly Ernswiler obsesses over military tactics with his buddy Bart. The school bully is one of Kelly's regular headaches, and he also has to deal with a frustrating situation at home, where his father is a recovering drug addict. Kelly's life gets even more complicated when he falls for Tabby, Bart's pretty and soon-to-be-wed older sister.

Just as Amelia thinks she's over her anxiety and insecurity, her best friend announces her engagement, bringing her anxiety and insecurity right back.

Two young women and their friends spend spare time at an exclusive nightclub in 1980s New York.

Jeffrey, a gay man living in New York City with an overwhelming fear of contracting AIDS, concludes that being celibate is the only option to protect himself. As fate would have it, shortly after his declaration of a sex-free existence, he meets the handsome Steve Howard, his dream man -- except for his HIV-positive status. Facing this dilemma, Jeffrey turns to his best friend and an outrageous priest for guidance.

Soon-to-be-wed graduate student Finn Dodd develops cold feet when she suspects her fiancé is cheating on her. In order to clear her head, Finn visits her grandmother, Hy, and great aunt, Glady Joe Cleary, in Grasse, Calif. There, Finn learns that Hy and Glady Joe are members of a group of passionate quilters, and over the course of her visit she is regaled with tales of love and life by women who have collected rich experiences and much wisdom.

Nora Wilder (Parker Posey), a single, career woman works at a Manhattan boutique hotel where her excellent skills in guest relations lack in the romantic department. If it is not her loving and dominant mother (Gena Rowlands) attempting to set her up that consistently fail, she has her friend’s (Drea de Matteo) disastrous blind dates to rely on as a backup for further dismay. She's surrounded by friends who are all happily engaged or romantically involved and somehow, love escapes Nora -- until she meets an unusual Frenchman (Melvil Poupaud) who helps her discover life beyond her self-imposed boundaries.

Megan is an all-American girl. A cheerleader. She has a boyfriend. But Megan doesn't like kissing her boyfriend very much. And she's pretty touchy with her cheerleader friends. Her conservative parents worry that she must be a lesbian and send her off to "sexual redirection" school, where she must, with other lesbians and gays learn how to be straight.

Convinced he'll graduate with honors because of his thesis paper, a stuffy Harvard student finds his paper being held hostage by a homeless man, who might be the guy to school the young man in life.

A mentally challenged girl proves herself to be every bit as capable as her "perfect" sister when she moves into an apartment and begins going to college.

The employees of an independent music store learn about each other as they try anything to stop the store being absorbed by a large chain.

When Jack and Sally announce that they're splitting up, this comes as a shock to their best friends Gabe and Judy. Maybe mostly because they also are drifting apart and are now being made aware of it. So while Jack and Sally try to go on and meet new people, the marriage of Gabe and Judy gets more and more strained, and they begin to find themselves being attracted to other people.

Aspiring architect Tom Thompson is told by mysterious Ruth Abernathy that his best friend, "Bill," has taken his own life. Except that Tom has never met Bill and neither have his incredulous friends. So when Tom foolishly agrees to give the eulogy at Bill's funeral, it sets him on a collision course with Ruth -- who is revealed to be Bill's oversexed mother -- and Julie DeMarco, the longtime crush Tom hasn't seen since they were teens.

The tale of a ten-year-old boy in a Catholic school who, following the death of his beloved grandfather, embarks on a quest to discover the meaning of life.

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.

Emma Woodhouse is a congenial young lady who delights in meddling in other people’s affairs. She is perpetually trying to unite men and women who are utterly wrong for each other. Despite her interest in romance, Emma is clueless about her own feelings, and her relationship with gentle Mr. Knightly.

Sidney is a writer who's just left her L.A. Times music review gig to edit New York hip-hop magazine XXL. Dre is an executive with a hip-hop record company based in New York. They've known each other since they met as children, when both discovered hip-hop for the first time. Now that they're back together, they should be perfect for each other, except that Dre's about to marry lawyer Reese and Sidney claims not to be interested in Dre romantically. Meanwhile, Dre is growing increasingly restless with his company's focus on profit over artistry, which leads to signing the gimmicky duo Ren and Ten while ignoring the talented Chris

A young woman with Asperger's tries to find her first boyfriend with a little help from her older sister.

Cheated on, mistreated and stepped on, the women are holding their breath, waiting for the elusive "good man" to break a string of less-than-stellar lovers. Friends and confidants Vannah, Bernie, Glo and Robin talk it all out, determined to find a better way to breathe.

Sissy Hankshaw is born with enormous thumbs that help her hitchhiking through the US from a young age. She becomes a model in advertising and her NY agent 'the Countess' sends her to his ranch in CA to shoot a commercial, set against the background of mating whooping cranes. There, she befriends Bonanza Jellybean, one of the cowgirls at the beauty- ranch.

Miranda Presley moves from New York to Nashville to become a songwriter. At an unsuccessful audition she meets James Wright, a promising newcomer. After only a few days they marry but start to quickly regret it.

Romantic comedy about six of Seattle's young people, most of whom live in the same apartment building and whose lives revolve around the city's ever-expanding music scene. The interrelated stories about each character's progress through the singles scene are intriguing and often very funny, and the soundtrack is a grunge fanatic's dream, with the likes of Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Mudhoney.

Unsure of what to do next, 23-year-old Marnie tries her best to navigate life after college. Still partying like there's no tomorrow, Marnie drags herself out of bed for her miserable temp job and can't decide whether she's wasting her time going after best buddy Alex, who doesn't seem to be interested.

For Tobe, a nerdy, horny, frizzy-haired cineaste who doesn't quite fit in with the average contemporary teen, the pinnacle of womanhood is Monica Velour, a soft-core actress who reached the zenith of her career in the 1980s. When Tobe learns that his love idol is headlining hundreds of miles away at the Gentlemen's Petting Zoo in Indiana, he drives off with carefree glory, filled with the hope of meeting her.

College coeds in New York City, Al, the son of a celebrity chef, and Imogen, a talented artist, become smitten the second they lay eyes on one another at a bar. However, the road to happiness is not a smooth one. Outside forces, including a predatory porn star who wants to lure Al into her bed, threaten to pull apart the young lovers before their romance has a chance to really flourish.

A family dog—with a near-human soul and a philosopher's mind—evaluates his life through the lessons learned by his human owner, a race-car driver.

As an asteroid nears Earth, a man finds himself alone after his wife leaves in a panic. He decides to take a road trip to reunite with his high school sweetheart. Accompanying him is a neighbor who inadvertently puts a wrench in his plan.

When Elliot, a brash 23-year-old living carefree in New York City, meets the sensible Mia and receives a damning diagnosis all in the same week, his world is turned completely upside down. But as their love blossoms amidst the chaos of his treatment, they discover that Elliot's illness is not the real test of their relationship – it's everything else.

Wondering what has happened to herself, now feeling stagnant and in a rut, Shirley Valentine finds herself regularly talking to the wall while preparing her husband's chips and egg. When her best friend wins a trip-for-two to Greece Shirley begins to see the world, and herself, in a different light.

Rose Morgan, who still lives with her mother, is a professor of Romantic Literature who desperately longs for passion in her life. Gregory Larkin, a mathematics professor, has been burned by passionate relationships and longs for a sexless union based on friendship and respect.