Movies like Small Change (1976)
The best movies like Small Change (1976) are The Holdovers (2023), The Good Half (2024) and SubUrbia (1997). If Small Change 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 Holdovers (2023)7.7/10 from 2,772 votes
- NewestSee The Sea (2025)Released 2025
- In FrenchOnce Upon My Mother (2025)Also in French
The Holdovers (2023)
A curmudgeonly instructor at a New England prep school is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker — and with the school’s head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Good Half (2024)
Renn Wheeland returns home to Cleveland for his mother's funeral. Once there, he forges new relationships while healing old ones, before confronting his problems and trying to face his grief.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSubUrbia (1997)
A group of suburban teenagers try to support each other through the difficult task of becoming adults.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOnce Upon My Mother (2025)
In 1963, Esther gives birth to Roland, the youngest of a large family. Roland is born with a club foot that prevents him from standing. Against everyone's advice, she promises her son that he will walk like the others and that he will have a fabulous life. From then on, Esther will do everything in her power to keep this promise. Through decades of trials and miracles of life, this film is the story of a true, funny and moving story, that of an incredible destiny and the greatest love there is: that of a mother for her child.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSee The Sea (2025)
A young boy who gradually loses sight goes on a getaway vacation with his divorced parents.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisChloe and Theo (2015)
A young woman, Chloe, living by her wits on the streets of New York City, has a chance meeting with a wise Inuit Eskimo, Theo, who was sent to New York by his elders to provide a message to the people of the world – We either change our destructive was or be destroyed by them. Chloe, who has been searching for something to believe in, becomes inspired by Theo and , with the help of a kind lawyer, Monica, the three of them present Theo’s story to the United Nations in hopes of creating a better future for all of us.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisUnder the Stars of Paris (2021)
Christine’s life has not been easy lately. Her lonely routine is divided between free food banks distributions and wandering the streets. On a cold winter night she founds Suli, an 8-year-old Eritrean boy, sobbing in front of her shelter. Christine understands that he is lost and has been separated from his mother. Bounded by their marginal condition, they embark together on an emotional journey to find Suli’s mother in the underground world of Paris...
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDutch (1991)
To get to know his girlfriend's son, a man volunteers to pick him up from a prep school... only to learn that her son's not the nicest kid.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Magnificent Tramp (1959)
Bum Archimède wants to spend the winter in prison, but to get there proves not to be that easy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSix Pack (1982)
Stopping briefly in a small Texas town, an itinerant race car driver finds that his stock car, on a trailer behind his motor home, has just been quickly and expertly stripped. He chases down the miscreants, who turn out to be six orphan children. He has no recourse to the law, for the corrupt local sheriff takes most of the proceeds of their thievery in exchange for not putting them in an orphanage. They are charming rogues who are in turn charmed by him. Disliking their arrangement with the sheriff, they stow away with him, and he finds himself becoming a reluctant stepfather. Thanks to their enthusiasm and incredible mechanical know-how, he begins to make a name for himself on the racing circuit. But the sheriff doesn't take kindly to losing his extra income...
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Toy (1976)
When Francois, a journalist, tours a big store for an article, he is chosen by the son of the newspaper's owner, Rambal-Cochet, as his new toy. Needing money and unwilling to quit his job, Francois agrees to this ridiculous assignment. Gradually befriending the spoiled boy, he induces him to play at making a newspaper, unveiling publicly the tyrannical way of life of the father. The powerful emotional climax we experience with the child astonishes both men.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBoyhood (2014)
The film tells a story of a divorced couple trying to raise their young son. The story follows the boy for twelve years, from first grade at age 6 through 12th grade at age 17-18, and examines his relationship with his parents as he grows.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDrillbit Taylor (2008)
Dealing with a sociopathic school bully, three high school freshmen hire a low-budget bodyguard to protect them, not realizing he is just a homeless beggar and petty thief looking for some easy cash.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
SnoozefestMovies like thisYoung Mothers (2025)
Housed in a shelter for young mothers, Jessica, Perla, Julia, Ariane, and Naïma, all of whom have grown up in difficult circumstances, struggle to obtain a better life for themselves and their children.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHubie Halloween (2020)
Hubie Dubois, despite his devotion to his hometown of Salem, Massachusetts (and its legendary Halloween celebration), is a figure of mockery for kids and adults alike. But this year, something really is going bump in the night, and it’s up to Hubie to save Halloween.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
SnoozefestMovies like thisNoel (2004)
With Christmas Eve just around the corner in bustling New York, five lonely and sad strangers find their lives inadvertently intersected.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisDetachment (2011)
A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisShort Term 12 (2013)
Grace, a compassionate young supervisor at a foster care facility, helps at-risk teens. But when a new charge dredges up memories of her own troubled past, Grace's tough exterior begins eroding.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThree Days and a Life (2019)
Christmas 1999, in a peaceful little village in the Ardennes. The life of a young boy named Antoine will soon be devastated by three tragic events : the death of a dog, the vanishing of a child, and a big ravaging storm.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAll Together Now (2020)
An optimistic, talented teen clings to a huge secret: she's homeless and living on a school bus. When tragedy strikes, can she learn to accept a helping hand?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHoliday Rush (2019)
After his sudden firing, a popular radio DJ moves in with his aunt, bringing along his four spoiled children, and a plan to return to the airwaves.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & comedy
SnoozefestMovies like thisStand by Me Doraemon (2014)
Sewashi and Doraemon find themselves way back in time and meet Nobita. It is up to Doraemon to take care of Nobita or else he will not return to the present.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAutumn (2014)
His school is closed. There are no other children on those mountains. To keep studying, this young kid must go to another place - unknown place. He finds haven in places he knows. Deep into autumn and this caterpillar still not a butterfly
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Bhakshak (2024)
A struggling local journalist begins a dogged investigation into harrowing cases of abuse being covered up at a shelter for young girls.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAbigail (2021)
A lonely and elderly widower struggles to come to terms with the loss of his wife and the circumstances surrounding her death. When he visits her grave, he encounters a little girl who shows him the path to healing and fills him with hope.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Song of Names (2019)
A man searches for his childhood best friend, a Polish violin prodigy orphaned in the Holocaust, who vanished decades before on the night of his first public performance.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBack to Black (2024)
The extraordinary story of Amy Winehouse’s early rise to fame from her early days in Camden through the making of her groundbreaking album, Back to Black that catapulted Winehouse to global fame. Told through Amy’s eyes and inspired by her deeply personal lyrics, the film explores and embraces the many layers of the iconic artist and the tumultuous love story at the center of one of the most legendary albums of all time.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSoulmate (2023)
When Mi-so and Ha-eun first meet in childhood, their lives become instantly intertwined, forming a bond surrounded by happiness and naivety. But as adulthood arrives, alone and together, they are forced to deal with sadness, anger, grief, growth, and most of all, love.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisBusted: Christmas for Everyone (2003)
Whilst doing their last concert before the Christmas Holidays, Busted find that their guitars have all disappeared mysteriously. With their only clue to there where-abouts being a mysterious note signed by 'Sinister Santa' the band take on London in hopes of finding their Guitars but learn the true meaning of Christmas along the way.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Forever Young (1983)
Girls at a Beijing High School in 1952 have dreams for China.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Like Small Change and something else?
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Small Change?
The closest matches to Small Change are The Holdovers (2023), The Good Half (2024) and SubUrbia (1997). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Small Change?
Start with The Holdovers (2023), the closest match to Small Change.
What is the highest-rated movie like Small Change?
The Holdovers (2023), rated 7.7/10 by 2,772 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Small Change?
See The Sea (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like Small Change?
Yes: Once Upon My Mother (2025), See The Sea (2025) and Under the Stars of Paris (2021).
How are movies similar to Small Change chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Small Change, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.