Movies like Happy Day (2026)
The best movies like Happy Day (2026) are A Thousand and One Nights (1969), Real Women Have Curves (2002) and Mind Game (2004). If Happy Day hooked you, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedLove Exposure (2008)7.9/10 from 556 votes
- NewestMarked Men: Rule + Shaw (2025)Released 2025
- In JapaneseA Thousand and One Nights (1969)Also in Japanese
A Thousand and One Nights (1969)
Aldin, a vagabond water vendor, embarks of a series of fantastical and tragic misadventures through the Middle East in search of love, fortune, and power.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisReal Women Have Curves (2002)
In East Los Angeles, an 18-year-old struggles between her ambitions of going to college and the desires of her domineering mother for her to get married, have children, and oversee the small, rundown family-owned textile factory.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMind Game (2004)
Nishi is a loser who has a crush on his childhood girlfriend. After an encounter with the Japanese mafia, he journeys to heaven and back, and ends up trapped in an even more unlikely place.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDinner in America (2022)
An on-the-lam punk rocker and a young woman obsessed with a local band go on an unexpected and epic journey together through the decaying suburbs of the American Midwest.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGenius Party (2007)
The seven short films making up GENIUS PARTY couldn’t be more diverse, linked only by a high standard of quality and inspiration. Atsuko Fukushima’s intro piece is a fantastic abstraction to soak up with the eyes. Masaaki Yuasa, of MIND GAME and CAT SOUP fame, brings his distinctive and deceptively simple graphic style and dream-state logic to the table with “Happy Machine,” his spin on a child’s earliest year. Shinji Kimura’s spookier “Deathtic 4,” meanwhile, seems to tap into the creepier corners of a child’s imagination and open up a toybox full of dark delights. Hideki Futamura’s “Limit Cycle” conjures up a vision of virtual reality, while Yuji Fukuyama’s "Doorbell" and "Baby Blue" by Shinichiro Watanabe use understated realism for very surreal purposes. And Shoji Kawamori, with “Shanghai Dragon,” takes the tropes and conventions of traditional anime out for very fun joyride.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHounddog (2008)
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTokyo Decadence (1992)
A submissive hooker goes about her trade, suffering abuse at the hands of Japanese salarymen and Yakuza types. She's unhappy about her work, and is apparently trying to find some sort of appeasement for the fact that her lover has married.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBelow Her Mouth (2017)
An unexpected affair quickly escalates into a heart-stopping reality for two women whose passionate connection changes their lives forever.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPalm Trees and Power Lines (2023)
Seventeen-year-old Lea spends her summer break tanning in her backyard, and drifting between tiptoeing around her needy mother, and aimlessly trailing her best friend and boys from school. This monotony is interrupted by a chance encounter with Tom, a seductive man twice her age who promises an alternative to Lea's unsatisfying adolescent life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBanana Split (2018)
After a messy breakup with her high school boyfriend, April strikes up an unexpected platonic friendship with his new girlfriend, Clara.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAntiporno (2017)
Kyôko, a traumatized young Japanese girl, finds herself struggling with her self-confidence in her adult life. Growing up in a family without her mother and her sister, she constantly questions the rationale of sex and the notion of liberty in modern Japanese society.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLove Exposure (2008)
The story of a teenage boy called Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while operating for the sake of sin as an upskirt photographer in an offshoot of the porn industry. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing - which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian - dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with the guilt that's a legacy of his Catholic upbringing.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMarked Men: Rule + Shaw (2025)
Shaw Landon has loved Rule Archer from the moment she laid eyes on him. Rule, a fiery-tempered rebel tattoo artist, doesn’t have time for a good girl pre-med student like Shaw — even if she’s the only one who can see the person he truly is. She lives by other people’s rules; he makes his own. But a short skirt, too many birthday cocktails, and spilled secrets lead to a night neither can forget. Now, Shaw and Rule must figure out how a girl like her and a guy like him are supposed to be together without destroying their love…or each other.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisValley Girl (1983)
Julie, a girl from the valley, meets Randy, a punk from the city. They are from different worlds and find love. Somehow they need to stay together in spite of her trendy, shallow friends.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
A group of Southern-California high school students ignore their studies in favor of indulging in their teenage distractions.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLove Don't Co$t a Thing (2003)
A high school outcast pays a cheerleader to pose as his girlfriend so he can be considered cool.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies 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
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFlower & Snake: Zero (2014)
Misaki Amemiya is an assistant inspector for the Metropolitan Police Department's Community Safety Bureau who becomes ensnared in a trap while investigating a mysterious illegal video website called "Babylon". Soon, she's bound and tortured along with Shizuko and an oversexed housewife named Ruri.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKiss and Cry (2017)
A romantic drama based on the story of Carley Allison, a promising 18 year old figure skater and singer who made medical history in her fight against a rare 1 in 3.5 billion type of sarcoma.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDick Figures: The Movie (2013)
Two best friends, Red and Blue, risk everything to find the greatest treasure of all time.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLady Next Door Who Made an Affair Contract (2022)
Jeong-hye and Ji-hwan are a couple who have been living a wandering life due to debt. Ji-hwan makes a secret deal with Man-soo, the new owner of their previous house. The couple can stay at Man-soo's house, but in exchange, Ji-hwan must have sex with Man-soo's wife, Tae-hee. Man-soo also ends up taunting Jeong-hye secretly, using her unemployed husband as bait. Later, Jeong-hye and Ji-hwan eventually find out that they have been secretly played by the couple and get frustrated. In the end, Man-soo and Tae-hee propose a new offer to the couple.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Married Woman and Mistress Affair Peeping (1998)
A sensual drama depicting the friendship between a woman who continues to have an affair and a man who provokes her by secretly filming her. Satomi Yoko, who has just made her debut, received high praise for her passionate performance as a woman who drowns her loneliness with infidelity and is also attracted to an unknown voyeur. Maki (Yoko Satomi), who lives alone, invites Yuji (Akira Yokozuka) to her room and they get close to each other, and the act is revealed to the detective hired by his wife (Keiko Seto), but he is caught on camera from the apartment across the street. The presence of Toshiaki (Atsushi Toyama), who spies on Maki and calls Maki every time they have an affair, causes ripples in their muddy relationship.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Payment for Adultery (1963)
A married woman has an affair. She soon must deal with a menacing voice on the phone...
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Painful Bliss: Final Twist (1977)
A young executive has a really bad night after an encounter with a crazed bisexual wannabe yakuza and his horny girlfriend.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
My Favorite Wife is Addicted to Sex (1997)
Hinako, a married woman, feels unsatisfied with her married life with her husband, Takashi, so she suddenly declares a domestic separation and indulges in an affair with Shima, her senior from high school. Meanwhile, Hinako was confused when Yuri, whom she met at her favorite snack bar, asked her out.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
B.E.D (2012)
The stories of three characters whose joy, passion and despair overflow in one bed are tangled like a puzzle. Tantalizing but heartbreaking, stimulating but sad, this movie explores human desires without hesitation and fear. B (Bed for Werther), E (Erotic desire of Aphrodite) and D (Dream about comfortable slumber) talk about the same bed with different languages and different gestures.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Moments with Johan (1996)
The beautiful gay erotic superstar Johan Paulik is enthusiastically celebrated in this jam-packed compendium of Johan's greatest on-screen performances, plus an exclusive interview with the charming boy himself and previously unseen out-takes which reveal the charm and humor of this much admired adult model.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Sex Angel: From the Underground Videos, with Love (1988)
A fantasy erotic work in which a woman who appears in an adult video actually appears in front of various people who watch the video and fulfills their desires. Omori stops by a video rental store on his way home from work and casually picks up a video in a black package. When he plays it at home, it's just boring. Disappointed, Omori tries to turn off the video, but a woman calls out to him from inside the TV, saying, "Don't turn it off. I love you."
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Like Happy Day and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Happy Day?
The closest matches to Happy Day are A Thousand and One Nights (1969), Real Women Have Curves (2002) and Mind Game (2004). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Happy Day?
Start with A Thousand and One Nights (1969), the closest match to Happy Day.
What is the highest-rated movie like Happy Day?
Love Exposure (2008), rated 7.9/10 by 556 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Happy Day?
Marked Men: Rule + Shaw (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Japanese movies like Happy Day?
Yes: A Thousand and One Nights (1969), Mind Game (2004) and Genius Party (2007).
How are movies similar to Happy Day chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Happy Day, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.