Movies like Messy (2025)
The best movies like Messy (2025) are Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), In the Soup (1992) and Small Apartments (2012). If Messy hooked you with its comedy and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Dirt (2019)7.4/10 from 1,376 votes
- NewestSkintown (2026)Released 2026
Your Friends & Neighbors (1998)
Restless and unhappy, two couples get caught up in infidelity and deception. Barry is a sullen businessman married to Mary, a writer who is unsatisfied with their relationship. Mary begins an affair with Jerry, a smug theater professor and husband of her friend, Terri, who is also a writer. Adding to the adulterous mix are Cary, a callous doctor, and Cheri, an art-gallery assistant.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
SnoozefestMovies like thisIn the Soup (1992)
An aspiring young filmmaker gets involved with an eccentric gangster for the financing of his first film.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSmall Apartments (2012)
When a clumsy deadbeat accidentally kills his landlord, he must do everything in his power to hide the body, only to find that the distractions of lust, the death of his beloved brother, and a crew of misfit characters force him on a journey where a fortune awaits him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisSomewhere in Queens (2023)
Leo and Angela Russo live a simple life in Queens, surrounded by their overbearing Italian-American family. When their son finds success on his high school basketball team, Leo tears the family apart trying to make it happen.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)
After returning to Los Angeles from a group therapy session, documentary filmmaker Bob Sanders and his wife, Carol, find themselves becoming vigilante couples counselors, offering unsolicited advice to their best friends, Ted and Alice Henderson. Not wanting to be rude, the Hendersons play along, but some latent sexual tension among the four soon comes bubbling to the surface, and long-buried desires don't stay buried for long.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Clique (2008)
A young girl tries to fit in with a clique of popular middle school girls after moving into the guest house of one of their homes.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisFamily Weekend (2013)
A 16-year-old girl takes her parents hostage after they miss her big jump-roping competition.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHeavy Traffic (1973)
A white dropout struggles to become a cartoonist and filmmaker, drawing inspiration from the harsh, gritty world around him. Still sharing his rundown apartment with his middle-aged parents, an oafish slob of an Italian father and a ditzy nutcase of a Jewish mother, he's ridiculed and looked down upon by his friends, hypocrites who run with violent gangs and the Italian Mafia, and a shallow Black girl who makes her living downtown with the pimps and pushers. The cartoonist gets a chance to pitch a film idea to a movie mogul, but the story proves too outrageous: a far-future Earth, depleted by war and pollution, where a mutant antihero challenges and kills God.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Dirt (2019)
The story of Mötley Crüe and their rise from the Sunset Strip club scene of the early 1980s to superstardom.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAuto Focus (2002)
A successful TV star during the 1960s, former "Hogan's Heroes" actor Bob Crane projects a wholesome family-man image, but this front masks his persona as a sex addict who records and photographs his many encounters with women, often with the help of his seedy friend, John Henry Carpenter. This biographical drama reveals how Crane's double life takes its toll on him and his family, and ultimately contributes to his death.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisShame (2011)
Brandon, a thirty-something man living in New York, eludes intimacy with women but feeds his deepest desires with a compulsive addiction to sex. When his younger sister temporarily moves into his apartment, stirring up bitter memories of their shared painful past, Brandon's life, like his fragile mind, gets out of control.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisShane Gillis: Beautiful Dogs (2023)
In a rowdy stand-up set, Shane Gillis riffs on his girlfriend's Navy SEAL ex, touring George Washington's house and being bullied by an Australian Goth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHard to Die (1990)
While doing the inventory for a lingerie outlet in a high rise office building, five attractive women are terrorized by a series of bizarre killings. They suspect that the strange janitor, who witnessed another series of killings six months previously, is at the bottom of the whole thing. Little do they know the real horror that they face in the end.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRicky Gervais: Mortality (2025)
Ricky Gervais tackles life, death and the state of the world in a brutally honest special that spares no topic, even his own mortality.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNymphomaniac: Vol. I (2013)
A man named Seligman finds a fainted wounded woman in an alley and he brings her home. She tells him that her name is Joe and that she is nymphomaniac. Joe tells her life and sexual experiences with hundreds of men since she was a young teenager while Seligman tells about his hobbies, such as fly fishing, reading about Fibonacci numbers or listening to organ music.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Overnight (2015)
Alex, Emily, and their son, RJ, are new to Los Angeles. A chance meeting at the park introduces them to the mysterious Kurt, Charlotte, and Max. A family “playdate” becomes increasingly interesting as the night goes on.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
SnoozefestMovies like thisPimp (2018)
An urban love story set on the hard streets of the Bronx. A struggling female pimp, named Wednesday, grows up learning the game from her dad. Once he's gone she's left to look out for her prostitute mother and girlfriend Nikki.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBill Burr: Drop Dead Years (2025)
In what might be his most personal and introspective hour yet, Bill offers hilarious takes on everything from male sadness to dating advice.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSouth Park (Not Suitable for Children) (2023)
After it's discovered that a teacher at South Park Elementary has an OnlyFans page, Randy is compelled to take a closer look at the seedy underbelly of the world of online influencers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisJawbone (2017)
A former youth boxing champion, Jimmy McCabe is a man in search of hope but looking in all the wrong places. When he hits rock bottom he turns to his childhood boxing club and the only family he has left: gym owner Bill corner man Eddie and promoter Joe. Back in training, years after anyone thought he was a contender, he risks his life, as he tries to stand tall and regain his place in the world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAgnes and His Brothers (2004)
Focuses on three very different siblings, all searching for happiness. Hans-Jörg is a sex addicted librarian, who is interested in young students. Werner is a successful politician with a dysfunctional family. Agnes, a trans woman, works as a table dancer in a night club. The three brothers just have one thing in common: their longing for a happy life.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy & drama
May (2003)
A socially awkward veterinary assistant with a lazy eye and obsession with perfection descends into depravity after developing a crush on a boy with perfect hands.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSkintown (2026)
1994. As Northern Ireland takes its first steps towards peace, best friends Vinny and Jonty are about to jump start their futures with the most reckless trip of their lives.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy & drama
Anora (2024)
A young sex worker from Brooklyn gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as his parents set out to get the marriage annulled.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisShoegazer (2010)
What happens when a bartender on a mission to find her cheating boyfriend gets stuck driving a drunk high-schooler home? Trans Am, emergency room, strip club, showdown, vomit, sunrise. Yeah.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy & drama
Bad Education (2004)
When an old friend brings filmmaker Enrique Goded a semi-autobiographical script chronicling their adolescence, Enrique is forced to relive his youth spent at a Catholic boarding school. Weaving through past and present, the script follows a transvestite performer who reconnects with a grade school sweetheart. Spurred on by this chance encounter, the character reflects on her childhood sexual victimization and the trauma of closeting her sexual orientation.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGirl Upstairs (2022)
A successful but isolated artist, struggling with agoraphobia, has her life turned upside down when one of her works of art comes to life. At first, she joyfully accepts this reprieve from her self-imposed exile, but her new friends are not all they seem, and her small world starts to come apart as her fear of the outside comes into conflict with her new creations and their need for freedom.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Undercurrent (TBA)
A young man recently released from prison attempts to rebuild his life after the death of his mother.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Time (2027)
This fictional story follows the life of Jackson Bird as he overcomes the obstacles of life. He has always felt abandoned and not loved by the other people around him until he met the girl of his dreams as a teenager. However, after he goes through a life changing experience he realizes that nothing lasts forever.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Coming SoonMovies like thisPeople on Sunday (1930)
A semi-documentary experimental 1930 German silent film created by amateurs with a small budget. With authentic scenes of the metropolis city of Berlin, it's the first film from the later famous screenwriters/directors Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Messy?
The closest matches to Messy are Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), In the Soup (1992) and Small Apartments (2012). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Messy?
Start with Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), the closest match to Messy.
What is the highest-rated movie like Messy?
The Dirt (2019), rated 7.4/10 by 1,376 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Messy?
Skintown (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Messy?
Yes: Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), In the Soup (1992) and Small Apartments (2012).
How are movies similar to Messy chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Messy, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.