20 best movies like The Competition (1980)

A new music teacher in a 1955 West Texas home for wayward boys brings new vision and hope for many of the interned boys.

The film follows aspiring singer-songwriter Jed King (Alan Powell) as he struggles to catch a break and escape the long shadow of his father, a country music legend. After reluctantly accepting a gig at a local vineyard harvest festival, Jed is love-struck by the vineyard owner’s daughter, Rose (Ali Faulkner), and a romance quickly blooms. Soon after their wedding, Jed writes Rose “The Song,” which becomes a breakout hit. Thrust into a life of stardom and a world of temptation in the form of fellow performer Shelby Bale (Caitlin Nicol-Thomas), Jed’s life and marriage begin to fall apart.

A young Jewish man is torn between tradition and individuality when his old-fashioned family objects to his career as a jazz singer. This is the first full length feature film to use synchronized sound, and is the original film musical.

A young musician travels to Burning Man, a psychedelic festival in the middle of the Nevada desert, in an attempt to get the impetuous girl he has fallen in love with.

Chronicles the rise and fall of legendary blues singer Billie Holiday. Her late childhood, stint as a prostitute, early tours, marriages and drug addiction are featured.

Seasoned musician Jackson Maine discovers — and falls in love with — struggling artist Ally. She has just about given up on her dream to make it big as a singer — until Jack coaxes her into the spotlight. But even as Ally's career takes off, the personal side of their relationship is breaking down, as Jack fights an ongoing battle with his own internal demons.

The lives of a young couple intertwine with a much older man as he reflects back on a lost love while he's trapped in an automobile crash.

Drunken, has-been rock star John Norman Howard falls in love with unknown singer, Esther Hoffman, after seeing her perform at a club. He lets her sing a few songs at one of his shows and she becomes the talk of the music industry. Esther's star begins to rise, while John's continues to fall. She tries desperately to get John to sober up and focus on his music, but it may be too late to save him.

A boy growing up in Dublin during the 1980s escapes his strained family life by starting a band to impress the mysterious girl he likes.

Young Cuban Rafael just buried his mother, and comes to Houston to meet his father John for the first time. The difficult part is that John doesn't know he is Rafael's father. John runs a dance studio, and everyone prepares for the World Open Dance championship in Las Vegas. It soon becomes clear Rafael is a very good dancer, and Ruby is the biggest hope for the studio at the championship.

A young woman is catapulted into pop stardom, with her already-famous DJ boyfriend calling the shots.

Noni Jean is a hot new rising star. But not all is what it seems, and the pressure causes Noni to nearly fall apart - until she meets Kaz Nicol, a promising young cop and aspiring politician who's been assigned to her detail. Can Kaz's love give Noni the courage to find her own voice and break free to become the artist she was meant to be?

Soon after the rising young singer-songwriter Beau Williams gets involved with a fallen, emotionally unstable country star Kelly Canter, the pair embark on a career resurrection tour helmed by her husband/manager James and featuring a beauty queen-turned-singer Chiles Stanton. Between concerts, romantic entanglements and old demons threaten to derail them all.

Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.

All-stars from the previous Step Up installments come together in glittering Las Vegas, battling for a victory that could define their dreams and their careers.

Spitz is the German-Jewish coach of the football team Macedonia during World War II. Under his leadership, the team fights to become the champion of Bulgaria's National Football League

When reporter Jean Craddock interviews Bad Blake -- an alcoholic, seen-better-days country music legend -- they connect, and the hard-living crooner sees a possible saving grace in a life with Jean and her young son. But can he leave behind an existence playing in the shadow of Tommy, the upstart kid he once mentored?

The popular 1980’s dance movie that depicts the life of an exotic dancer with a side job as a welder who true desire is to get into ballet school. It’s her dream to be a professional dancer and now is her chance. The film has a great soundtrack with an Oscar winning song.

A long lost music producer finds a singer-songwriter right about the moment he has given up all hope on life.

Duets is a road-trip comedy which revolves around the little known world of karaoke and the whimsical characters who inhabit it. All roads lead to Omaha, site of a national karaoke competition where this motley group of singers and stars come together for a blow-out sing-off.

It's Hollywood, 1958. Small town beauty queen and devout Baptist virgin Marla Mabrey, under contract to the infamous Howard Hughes, arrives in Los Angeles. At the airport, she meets her driver Frank Forbes, who is engaged to be married to his seventh grade sweetheart and is a deeply religious Methodist. Their instant attraction not only puts their religious convictions to the test, but also defies Hughes' number one rule: No employee is allowed to have any relationship whatsoever with a contract actress. Hughes' behavior intersects with Marla and Frank in very separate and unexpected ways, and as they are drawn deeper into his bizarre world, their values are challenged and their lives are changed.

Classical violinist, Roger Grant disappoints his family and teacher when he organizes a jazz band, but he and the band become successful. Roger falls in love with the band's singer, Stella, but his reluctance to lose her leads him to thwart her efforts to become a solo star. When the World War separates them in 1917, Stella marries Roger's best friend and, when Roger returns home after the war, an important concert at Carnegie Hall brings the corners of the romantic triangle together.

James, a new speech teacher at a school for the deaf, falls for Sarah, a pupil who decided to stay on at the school rather than venture into the big bad world. She shuns him at first, refusing to read his lips and only using signs.

Upon first sight of a beautiful instructor, a bored and overworked estate lawyer signs up for ballroom dancing lessons.

The lives of two struggling musicians, who happen to be brothers, inevitably change when they team up with a beautiful, up-and-coming singer.

A drama centered on a rebellious girl who is sent to a Southern beach town for the summer to stay with her father. Through their mutual love of music, the estranged duo learn to reconnect.

A star is born in a time of both celebration and instability in this historical drama with music from director Christophe Barratier. In the spring of 1936, Paris is in a state of uncertainty; while the rise of the Third Reich in Germany worries many, a leftist union-oriented candidate, Léon Blum, has been voted into power, and organized labor is feeling its new power by standing up to management.

A chronicle of country music legend Johnny Cash's life, from his early days on an Arkansas cotton farm to his rise to fame with Sun Records in Memphis, where he recorded alongside Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins.

Legendary trumpeter Art Hazzard teaches young Rick Martin everything he knows about playing, so Rick becomes a star musician, but a troubled marriage and the desire to play pure jazz instead of commercial swing songs cause him problems.

A classical musician from a working class background is sidetracked by his love for a wealthy, neurotic socialite.

Story of a schoolteacher's struggle to teach violin to inner-city Harlem kids.

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.

Eve is a catastrophe—low on self-esteem but high on fantasy, especially when it comes to music. Over the course of one Glasgow summer, she meets two similarly rootless souls: posh Cass and fastidious James, and together they form a group.

In pre-revolution Cuba, Katey Miller is about to defy everyone's expectations. Instead of a parent-approved suitor, Katey is drawn to the sexy waiter, Javier, who spends his nights dancing in Havana's nightclubs. As she secretly learns to dance with Javier, she learns the meanings of love, sensuality and independence.

As bareknuckled boxing enters the modern era, brash extrovert Jim Corbett uses new rules and dazzlingly innovative footwork to rise to the top of the top of the boxing world.

Chance Harris looks to find a balance between his school, work, relationships and opportunity to perform at the nationally televised step competition during homecoming weekend at Truth University.

This is the story Delphine Lamarre, a young woman trying to focus on the way to dance rather than focused on her university studies. It will pass through trials and consequences facing choices.

In this biographical drama, Selena Quintanilla is born into a musical Mexican-American family in Texas. Her father, Abraham, realizes that his young daughter is talented and begins performing with her at small venues. She finds success and falls for her guitarist, Chris Perez, who draws the ire of her father. Seeking mainstream stardom, Selena begins recording an English-language album which, tragically, she would never complete.

In this classic drama, Vicky Page is an aspiring ballerina torn between her dedication to dance and her desire to love. While her imperious instructor, Boris Lermontov, urges to her to forget anything but ballet, Vicky begins to fall for the charming young composer Julian Craster. Eventually Vicky, under great emotional stress, must choose to pursue either her art or her romance, a decision that carries serious consequences.

Sara joins Julliard in New York to fulfill her and her mother's dream of becoming the Prima ballerina of the school. She befriends her roommates, Zoe and Miles, who teach hip-hop classes. She has ballet classes with the rigid and famous Monique Delacroix that she idolizes - Monique requires full commitment, discipline and hard work from her students. When Miles, who is a composer, invites Sara to help him compose the music for the dance choreography Sara's passion for hip-hop is sparked and she also falls in love with Miles. When she is assigned to perform Giselle in an important event, she feels divided between the technique of the ballet and the creative work offered by Miles.

A conservative lawyer named Diane takes her two teenage children Jake and Zoe to meet their estranged, hippie grandmother in Woodstock after her husband asks for a divorce.

The Theory of Everything is the extraordinary story of one of the world’s greatest living minds, the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde.

Erika Shinohara (Fumi Nikaido) is a first year of high school student. While talking to friends, she makes up a story about her "boyfriend." In reality, Erika Shinohara doesn't have a boyfriend. Erika's friends soon begin to doubt her story and Erika is also running out of lies. Erika then sees a pretty boy on the street and takes his picture discreetly. She later shows his picture to her friends as her boyfriend. The boy in the picture is Kyouya Sata (Kento Yamazaki) and happens to attend the same school as Erika. She tells Kyouya about her situation and asks him to be her pretend boyfriend. Even though Kyouya has a pretty appearance, he has a dark side.

Raise Your Voice is a coming-of-age story centered around a small-town singer, brokenhearted by the death of her brother in a car crash, who had secretly submitted her for a summer session at a performing arts academy in Los Angeles. In the performing arts academy, she experiences a whole new way of life in the big city, far from the small town lifestyle she's used to.

Ensemble drama centered around a group of ballet dancers, with a focus on one young dancer who's poised to become a principal performer.

Paris 1913. Coco Chanel is infatuated with the rich and handsome Boy Capel, but she is also compelled by her work. Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is about to be performed. The revolutionary dissonances of Igor's work parallel Coco's radical ideas. She wants to democratize women's fashion; he wants to redefine musical taste. Coco attends the scandalous first performance of The Rite in a chic white dress. The music and ballet are criticized as too modern, too foreign. Coco is moved but Igor is inconsolable.

At a picturesque lakeside estate, a love triangle unfolds between the legendary diva Irina, her lover Boris, and the ingénue Nina.

CBGB looks at New York's dynamic punk rock scene through the lens of the ground-breaking Lower East Side club started by eccentric Hilly Kristal (Alan Rickman) in 1973 which launched thousands of bands.

The true story of Rocco Granata, an Italian coal miner's son who followed his passion for music against his father's wishes and social barriers.

A boy meets a girl named Riya and falls in love. After struggling to convince her to be his girlfriend, she half-heartedly agrees to be his `half-girlfriend'.