Movies like The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete (2013)
The best movies like The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete (2013) are Times Square (1980), L.I.E. (2001) and 20th Century Women (2016). If The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedA Walk to Remember (2002)7.7/10 from 4,375 votes
- NewestThe Thing with Feathers (2025)Released 2025
Times Square (1980)
When a 13-year-old girl befriends a defiant antisocial child of the streets, the mismatched runaways set off to the Big Apple to find their own adventure.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisL.I.E. (2001)
With his mother dead and his father busy at work, Howie feels adrift in his New York suburb. He and his friend Gary spend their time burglarizing their neighbors' homes — until they make the mistake of robbing the house of Big John, a macho former Marine who is also an unrepentant pedophile. He propositions Howie, who declines, but the two eventually develop an unlikely and dangerous friendship.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this20th Century Women (2016)
In 1979 Santa Barbara, California, Dorothea Fields is a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie, at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women – Abbie, a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields' home and Julie, a savvy and provocative teenage neighbour – to help with Jamie's upbringing.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHellion (2014)
When motocross and heavy metal obsessed, 13-year-old Jacob's delinquent behavior forces CPS to place his little brother Wes with his aunt, Jacob and his emotionally absent father must finally take responsibility for their actions and each other in order to bring Wes home.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisMammal (2016)
After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTopside (2022)
Deep in the underbelly of New York City, a five year-old girl and her mother live among a community that has claimed the abandoned subway tunnels as their home. After a sudden police-mandated eviction, the pair are forced to flee aboveground into a brutal winter night. Determined to return home, they fight to find shelter as their world is thrown into chaos.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Thing with Feathers (2025)
Following the death of his wife, a young father's hold on reality crumbles, and a strange presence begins to stalk him from the shadowy recesses of the apartment he shares with his two young sons.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Thousand and One (2023)
Struggling but unapologetically living on her own terms, Inez is moving from shelter to shelter in mid-1990s New York City. With her 6-year-old son Terry in foster care and unable to leave him again, she kidnaps him so they can build their life together. As the years go by, their family grows and Terry becomes a smart yet quiet teenager, but the secret that has defined their lives threatens to destroy the home they have so improbably built.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Florida Project (2017)
The story of a precocious six year-old and her ragtag group of friends whose summer break is filled with childhood wonder, possibility and a sense of adventure while the adults around them struggle with hard times.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRebel Without a Cause (1955)
After moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato, and falls for local girl Judy. However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough, Buzz. When Buzz violently confronts Jim and challenges him to a drag race, the new kid's real troubles begin.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBastard Out of Carolina (1996)
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKisses (2008)
Two kids, Dylan and Kylie, run away from home on Christmas Day and spend a night of magic and terror on the streets of inner-city Dublin.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisJoe the King (1999)
A destitute 14-year-old struggles to keep his life together despite harsh abuse at his mother's hands, harsher abuse at his father's, and a growing separation from his slightly older brother.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisNight Always Comes (2025)
Facing eviction in a city her family can no longer afford, a woman plunges into a desperate and increasingly dangerous all-night search to raise $25,000.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Glass House (2001)
When Ruby and Rhett's parents are killed in a car accident, their carefree teenage lives are suddenly shattered. Moving to an incredible house in Malibu with the Glasses', old friends of the family, seems to be the beginning of a new life for them.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOut of the Blue (1981)
A young girl whose father is an ex-convict and whose mother is a junkie finds it difficult to conform and tries to find comfort in a quirky combination of Elvis and the punk scene.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Wanderers (1979)
The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBorn Innocent (1976)
A constant runaway is given over to the care of the state and finds herself in a remand centre for girls. She is soon caught between the uncaring bureaucracy, the sometimes brutal treatment from her peers and her own abusive family, and only one care worker sees her potential to rise above her tragic circumstances.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMaps to the Stars (2014)
Driven by an intense need for fame and validation, members of a dysfunctional Hollywood family chase celebrity, one another, and the relentless ghosts of their pasts. Their fragile ecosystem is disrupted by the arrival of Agatha, the scarred and estranged pyromaniac daughter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisYou Can Count on Me (2000)
A single mother's life is thrown into turmoil after her struggling, rarely-seen younger brother returns to town.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)
A down-on-his-luck crab fisherman embarks on a journey to get a young man with Down syndrome to a professional wrestling school in rural North Carolina and away from the retirement home where he’s lived for the past two and a half years.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Walk to Remember (2002)
When the popular, restless Landon Carter is forced to participate in the school drama production, he falls in love with Jamie Sullivan, the daughter of the town's minister. Jamie has a "to-do" list for her life, as well as a very big secret she must keep from Landon.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMy Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989)
No one expects much from Christy Brown, a boy with cerebral palsy born into a working-class Irish family. Though Christy is a spastic quadriplegic and essentially paralyzed, a miraculous event occurs when, at the age of 5, he demonstrates control of his left foot by using chalk to scrawl a word on the floor. With the help of his steely mother — and no shortage of grit and determination — Christy overcomes his infirmity to become a painter, poet and author.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGrow Up (TBA)
Sophie is a small-town teenager taking an art scholarship program at Wyatt University in the summer. This summer will change Sophie's life forever.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Raspberry Magic (2010)
An eleven-year-old science enthusiast turns her raspberry-growing project into an emotional mission to reunite her family after her father leaves and her mother falls into depression.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Fairyocious (2019)
Alma, petrified, does not know how to react when her son, age 8, wants to dress as a fairy and go to school. She asks advice from her neighbor, and eventually the entire building debates his right to behave cross-gender.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Camellia (2023)
The Vietnamese German Huong, equipped with her small video camera, documents her life before moving out, exploring her relationships with friends, family, places and objects that she leaves behind. A poetic snapshot of her person, addressed to her father.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Lord of the Flies (1990)
When their plane crashes, 25 schoolboys find themselves trapped on a tropical island, miles from civilization.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEmpire Waist (2024)
Lenore Miller’s size has always earned her teases and jeers in her school’s hallways, but this clothes-loving teenager is about to set the world on fire with her own line of inclusive fashion designs.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWonder Boys (2000)
Grady is a 50-ish English professor who hasn't had a thing published in years—not since he wrote his award winning 'Great American Novel' 7 years ago. This weekend proves even worse than he could imagine as he finds himself reeling from one misadventure to another in the company of a new wonder boy author.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete?
The closest matches to The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete are Times Square (1980), L.I.E. (2001) and 20th Century Women (2016). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete?
Start with Times Square (1980), the closest match to The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete?
A Walk to Remember (2002), rated 7.7/10 by 4,375 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete?
The Thing with Feathers (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete?
Yes: Times Square (1980), L.I.E. (2001) and 20th Century Women (2016).
How are movies similar to The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.