Tags: movies similar to Only When I Laugh (1981) - full list
Mark | imdb: 6.7 |
Genre | comedy, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:41 |
Substance-addicted Hollywood actress, Suzanne Vale is on the skids. After a spell at a detox centre her film company insists as a condition of continuing to employ her that she live with her mother, herself once a star and now a champion drinker. Such a set-up is bad news for Suzanne who has struggled for years to get out of her mother's shadow, and who still treats her like a child. Despite these and other problems, Suzanne begins to see the funny side of her situation, and also realises that not only do daughters have mothers—mothers do too.
Mark | imdb: 7.7 |
Genre | comedy, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 02:30 |
Greg is coasting through senior year of high school as anonymously as possible, avoiding social interactions like the plague while secretly making spirited, bizarre films with Earl, his only friend. But both his anonymity and friendship threaten to unravel when his mother forces him to befriend a classmate with leukemia.
Mark | imdb: 6.3 |
Genre | comedy, drama, family |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:57 |
A busy executive learns during a meeting that his mother may be dying and rushes home to her side. He ends up being his father's caretaker and becomes closer to him than ever before. Estranged from his own son, the executive comes to realize what has been missing in his own life.
Mark | imdb: 5.9 |
Genre | comedy, drama, music |
Country | USA |
Duration | 02:23 |
A sweeping multigenerational story set against the backdrop of the raw, roaring New York City of the late 1980s; adoption, teen pregnancy, drugs, hardcore punk rock, the unbridled optimism and reckless stupidity of the young—and old—are all major elements in this heart-aching tale of the son of diehard hippies and his strange odyssey through the extremes of late 20th century youth culture.
Mark | imdb: 6.3 |
Genre | comedy, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:46 |
When Michael McCann is thrown over by the woman he loves, he becomes something of a misanthrope and a miser, spending all of his spare money on collectible gold coins. Living in the same town is an affluent family with two sons: John and Tanny. Tanny's a wild boy, whom John cannot control, and one night he breaks into McCann's house, and steals the gold and disappears, which nearly confirms McCann's distrust of mankind. But then, a mysterious young woman dies in the snow outside McCann's house, and her small daughter makes her way to McCann's house and into McCann's life and heart.
Mark | imdb: 6.8 |
Genre | comedy, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 02:00 |
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.
Mark | imdb: 4.6 |
Genre | comedy, melodrama, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:48 |
A comedy-drama about best friends - one a straight woman, Abbie, the other a gay man, Robert - who decide to have a child together. Five years later, Abbie falls in love with a straight man and wants to move away with her and Robert's little boy Sam, and a nasty custody battle ensues.
Mark | imdb: 6.6 |
Genre | comedy, melodrama, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:29 |
Celeste and Jesse met in high school and got married young. They laugh at the same jokes and finish each other’s sentences. They are forever linked in their friends’ minds as the perfect couple – she, a high-powered businesswoman and budding novelist; he, a free spirit who keeps things from getting boring. Their only problem is that they have decided to get divorced. Can their perfect relationship withstand this minor setback?
Mark | imdb: 5.9 |
Genre | comedy, melodrama, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:46 |
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.
Mark | imdb: 6.9 |
Genre | comedy, drama, family |
Country | France, Greece |
Duration | 01:28 |
After his wife died a man refuses to go out and doesn't want to talk to his only son. Life has no meaning for him. One day his son finds a baby pelican and decides to leave the bird at home. Pelican helps the boy find his father again and revive him back to life ...
Mark | imdb: 6 |
Genre | comedy, melodrama, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:52 |
Gray Wheeler just lost everything. But it could be the best thing that ever happened to her. After the death of her fiancé, Gray moves in with her late love's best friends. While Sam and Dennis do their best to cheer Gray up, Fritz doesn't seem to care. Once Gray breaks through Fritz's defenses, however, she finally sees why her fiancé thought so highly of him. As they spend more time together, Gray learns that her chances for love have not died out with her fiancé. But when some surprise guests show up on their doorstep, it'll take the love of all of her new friends to help Gray learn that life may be messy, but love is messier.
Mark | imdb: 7.1 |
Genre | drama, adventure |
Country | United Kingdom, USA |
Duration | 02:13 |
In the Australian Outback, the Carmody family--Paddy, Ida and their teenage son Sean--are sheep drovers, always on the move. Ida and Sean want to settle down and buy a farm. Paddy wants to keep moving. A sheep-shearing contest, the birth of a child, drinking, gambling and a race horse will all have a part in the final decision.
Mark | imdb: 6.8 |
Genre | comedy, melodrama, drama, biography |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:55 |
Patch Adams is a doctor who doesn't look, act or think like any doctor you've met before. For Patch, humour is the best medicine and he's willing to do just anything to make his patients laugh—even if it means risking his own career.
Mark | imdb: 6.1 |
Genre | comedy, melodrama, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:35 |
Professor Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) might be imperiously brilliant, monumentally self-possessed and an intellectual giant -- but when it comes to solving the conundrums of love and family, he's as downright flummoxed as the next guy.
Mark | imdb: 7.4 |
Genre | comedy, melodrama, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:44 |
The Rizzos, a family who doesn't share their habits, aspirations, and careers with one another, find their delicate web of lies disturbed by the arrival of a young ex-con brought home by Vince, the patriarch of the family, who is a corrections officer in real life, and a hopeful actor in private.
Mark | imdb: 6.8 |
Genre | comedy, drama, family |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:54 |
Simon Birch and Joe Wenteworth are boys who have a reputation for being oddballs. Joe never knew his father, and his mother, Rebecca, is keeping her lips sealed no matter how much he protests. Simon, meanwhile, is an 11-year-old dwarf whose outsize personality belies his small stature. Indeed, he often assails the local reverend with thorny theological questions and joins Joe on his quest to find his biological father.
Mark | imdb: 7 |
Genre | comedy, melodrama, drama |
Country | United Kingdom |
Duration | 01:41 |
After inheriting a large country estate from his late father, Peter invites his friends from college: married couple Roger and Mary, the lonely Maggie, fashionable Sarah, and writer Andrew, who brings his American TV star wife, Carol. Sarah's new boyfriend, Brian, also attends. It has been 10 years since college, and they find their lives are very different.
Mark | imdb: 6.7 |
Genre | comedy, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 02:30 |
A world-weary college professor is given a life-changing diagnosis and decides to throw all pretense and conventions to the wind and live his life as boldly and freely as possible with a biting sense of humor, a reckless streak and a touch of madness.
Mark | imdb: 5.4 |
Genre | comedy, melodrama, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:47 |
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
Mark | imdb: 5.6 |
Genre | comedy, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:38 |
In the late '60s, the self-proclaimed belles of the rock 'n' roll ball, rocked the worlds of every music legend whose pants they could take off -- and they have the pictures to prove it. But it's been more than two decades since the Banger Sisters earned their nickname -- or even laid eyes on each other. Their reunion is the collision of two women's worlds; one who's living in the past, and one who's hiding from it. Together they learn to live in the moment.
Mark | imdb: 6.4 |
Genre | comedy, drama, family |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:46 |
A girl, abandoned by her mother when she was three, moves to a small town in Florida with her father. There, she adopts an orphaned dog she names Winn-Dixie. The bond between the girl and her special companion brings together the people in a small Florida town and heals her own troubled relationship with her father.
Mark | imdb: 6.8 |
Genre | comedy, melodrama, drama |
Country | United Kingdom |
Duration | 02:35 |
The friendship between two life-long girlfriends is put to the test when one starts a family and the other falls ill.
Mark | imdb: 6.6 |
Genre | comedy, melodrama, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:55 |
When Manny Singer's wife dies, his young daughter Molly becomes mute and withdrawn. To help cope with looking after Molly, he hires sassy housekeeper Corrina Washington, who coaxes Molly out of her shell and shows father and daughter a whole new way of life. Manny and Corrina's friendship delights Molly and enrages the other townspeople.
Mark | imdb: 7.2 |
Genre | comedy, drama, adventure, crime |
Country | USA |
Duration | 02:31 |
Malcolm is carefully surviving life in a tough neighborhood in Los Angeles while juggling college applications, academic interviews, and the SAT. A chance invitation to an underground party leads him into an adventure that could allow him to go from being a geek, to being dope, to ultimately being himself.
Mark | imdb: 5.3 |
Genre | comedy, drama, musical, family |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:58 |
Ever since her parents left her as a baby, little Annie has led a hard-knock life with her calculating foster mother, Miss Hannigan. However, all that changes when hard-nosed billionaire and mayoral candidate Will Stacks takes her in on the recommendation of his advisers. Stacks believes that he's Annie's guardian angel, but the plucky youngster's confidence and sunny outlook may mean that Annie will save Will instead.
Mark | imdb: 6.8 |
Genre | comedy, drama |
Country | United Kingdom |
Duration | 01:35 |
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.
Mark | imdb: 5 |
Genre | comedy, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:19 |
Set in the 1970's, MIGHTY FINE is the story of Joe Fine (Chazz Palminteri) a charismatic, high-spirited man, who relocates his family--wife Stella (Andie MacDowell), a Holocaust survivor, daughters Nathalie (Jodelle Ferland) and Maddie (Rainey Qualley)--from Brooklyn to New Orleans, in search of a better life. Unfortunately, Joe's spending spree is wildly out of touch with reality, as his apparel business is teetering on the brink of collapse, a fact he refuses to accept. Written and directed by Debbie Goodstein, MIGHTY FINE is told from the perspective of an adult Nathalie remembering the events of her youth, and is inspired by Goodstein's memories of her own father. MIGHTY FINE ultimately shows how coming to terms with the past without judgment is the most fruitful way to move toward the future.
Mark | imdb: 6.1 |
Genre | drama, family |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:50 |
A young boy fighting cancer writes letters to God, touching lives in his neighborhood and inspiring hope among everyone he comes in contact. An unsuspecting substitute postman, with a troubled life of his own, becomes entangled in the boy's journey and his family by reading the letters. They inspire him to seek a better life for himself and his own son he's lost through his alcohol addiction.