Movies like The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002)
The best movies like The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002) are Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), Running with Scissors (2006) and My Girl (1991). If The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys 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 ratedMy Girl (1991)7.4/10 from 2,397 votes
- NewestThe Altar Boys (2025)Released 2025
Slums of Beverly Hills (1998)
In 1976, a teenage girl struggles to cope while living with her neurotic lower-middle-class family of nomads on the outskirts of Beverly Hills.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRunning with Scissors (2006)
Young Augusten Burroughs absorbs experiences that could make for a shocking memoir: the son of an alcoholic father and an unstable mother, he's handed off to his mother's therapist, Dr. Finch, and spends his adolescent years as a member of Finch's bizarre extended family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
SnoozefestMovies like thisMy Girl (1991)
Vada Sultenfuss is obsessed with death. Her mother is dead, and her father runs a funeral parlor. She is also in love with her English teacher, and joins a poetry class over the summer just to impress him. Thomas J., her best friend, is "allergic to everything", and sticks with Vada despite her hangups. When Vada's father hires Shelly, and begins to fall for her, things take a turn to the worse...
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNow and Then (1995)
Waxing nostalgic about the bittersweet passage from childhood to puberty, four childhood girlfriends — Teeny, Chrissy, Samantha and Roberta — recall the magical summer of 1970. During their walk down memory lane, they reconcile experiences with boys, secrets, bullies and more.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCrossing the Bridge (1992)
A film about three high school friends who find their happy-go-lucky existence tarnished forever the instant they get embroiled in a drug-running scheme that goes awry. When things start getting messy, they rue the day they agreed to the venture; instead of smuggling weed from Canada to Detroit, which they'd expected, the threesome's forced to traffic a huge stash of heroin.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Imaginary Heroes (2004)
Matt Travis is good-looking, popular, and his school's best competitive swimmer, so everyone is shocked when he inexplicably commits suicide. As the following year unfolds, each member of his family struggles to recover from the tragedy with mixed results.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIt's Not Me, I Swear! (2008)
During the summer of 1968, Leon, a 10-year-old boy, navigates the hardships of young love, his lunatic mother's whims, and his urges to vandalize the house of his neighbors.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHouse of D (2004)
In the present, artist Tom Warshaw recalls his traumatic coming of age. As a 13-year-old growing up in New York City in 1973, Tom hangs out with Pappass, a mentally disabled man. With Tom's mother battling depression after the death of her husband, the young boy is left to his own devices. When Tom develops a crush on schoolmate Melissa, Pappass feels abandoned and begins behaving erratically.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRushmore (1998)
When a beautiful first-grade teacher arrives at a prep school, she soon attracts the attention of an ambitious teenager named Max, who quickly falls in love with her. Max turns to the father of two of his schoolmates for advice on how to woo the teacher. However, the situation soon gets complicated when Max's new friend becomes involved with her, setting the two pals against one another in a war for her attention.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIgby Goes Down (2002)
Igby Slocumb, a rebellious and sarcastic 17-year-old boy, is at war with the stifling world of old money privilege he was born into. With a schizophrenic father, a self-absorbed, distant mother, and a shark-like young Republican big brother, Igby figures there must be a better life out there -- and sets about finding it.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDazed and Confused (1993)
The adventures of a group of Texas teens on their last day of school in 1976, centering on student Randall Floyd, who moves easily among stoners, jocks and geeks. Floyd is a star athlete, but he also likes smoking weed, which presents a conundrum when his football coach demands he sign a "no drugs" pledge.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBottle Rocket (1996)
Upon his release from a mental hospital following a nervous breakdown, the directionless Anthony joins his friend Dignan, who seems far less sane than the former. Dignan has hatched a harebrained scheme for an as-yet-unspecified crime spree that somehow involves his former boss, the (supposedly) legendary Mr. Henry.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015)
Minnie Goetze is a 15-year-old aspiring comic-book artist, coming of age in the haze of the 1970s in San Francisco. Insatiably curious about the world around her, Minnie is a pretty typical teenage girl. Oh, except that she’s sleeping with her mother’s boyfriend.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKids in America (2005)
Inspired by real events, this ribald comedy pits an unlikely gang of students against their principal after she bars safe-sex activities on campus. Protesting Principal Weller's muzzling of free speech, the teens stage a bold and hilarious rebellion.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Edge of Seventeen (2016)
Two high school girls are best friends until one dates the other's older brother, who is totally his sister's nemesis.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Way Way Back (2013)
Shy 14-year-old Duncan goes on summer vacation with his mother, her overbearing boyfriend, and her boyfriend's daughter. Having a rough time fitting in, Duncan finds an unexpected friend in Owen, manager of the Water Wizz water park.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Kings of Summer (2013)
Three restless teenagers run away to the woods for the summer, determined to escape their parents and live by their own rules. In a hidden clearing, they build a makeshift house and attempt to create an independent life, testing their friendship, freedom, and the challenges of living off the land.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Ice Storm (1997)
In the weekend after thanksgiving 1973 the Hood family is skidding out of control. Then an ice storm hits, the worst in a century.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThumbsucker (2005)
Justin Cobb, a teenager in suburban Oregon, copes with his thumb-sucking problem, romance, and his diagnosis with ADHD and subsequent experience using Ritalin.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMeasure of a Man (2018)
A bullied teen experiences a turning point summer in which he learns to stand up for himself.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStrike! (1998)
In 1963 New England, a group of friends at an all-girls academy learn that they're going to be combined with a nearby all-boys institution. They concoct a plan to save their school while dealing with everyday problems along the way.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Virgin Suicides (2000)
A group of male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Altar Boys (2025)
A group of teenage altar boys, frustrated by the indifferent attitude of adults and the Church towards social injustices, decides to implement their own unconventional plan for moral renewal of their neighbourhood. Armed with youthful rebellion and their personal interpretation of the Bible, they set up a wiretap… in the confessional.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Riding in Cars with Boys (2001)
In 1965, a young woman with dreams of becoming a writer has a son at the age of 15 and struggles to make things work with the drug-addicted father.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Opposite of Sex (1998)
A 16-year-old girl visits her gay half-brother and ends up seducing his boyfriend, thus wreaking havoc on all of their lives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFlower (2017)
Rebellious, quick-witted Erica Vandross is a 17-year-old firecracker living with her single mom, Laurie, and her mom's new boyfriend, Bob, in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley. When Bob's mentally unbalanced son, Luke, arrives from rehab to live with the family, Erica finds her domestic and personal life overwhelmed. With Luke and her sidekicks Kala and Claudine in tow, Erica acts out by exposing a high school teacher's dark secret.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Chumscrubber (2005)
The Chumscrubber is a dark comedy about the lives of people who live in upper-class suburbia. It all begins when Dean Stiffle finds the body of his friend, Troy. He doesn't bother telling any of the adults because he knows they won't care. Everyone in town is too self consumed to worry about anything else than themselves. And everybody is on some form of drug just to get through their days.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAsteroid City (2023)
In an American desert town circa 1955, the itinerary of a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention is spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDesert Blue (1999)
An academic obsessed with roadside attractions and his tv-star daughter stop at a small desert town to see the world's largest ice cream cone, where, because of an accident that spilled an unknown substance all over the highway, they are forced to spend a few days with the towns eccentric residents.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisSaint Ralph (2005)
This Canadian made comedy/drama, set in Hamilton, Ontario in 1954, is a sweet and - at times - goofy story that becomes increasingly poignant as the minutes tick by. It's the fictional tale of a wayward 9th grader, Ralph (Adam Butcher), who is secretly living on his own while his widowed, hospitalized mother remains immersed in a coma. Frequently in trouble with Father Fitzpatrick (Gordon Pinsent), the principal of his all-boys, Catholic school, Ralph is considered something of a joke among peers until he decides to pull off a miracle that could save his mother, i.e., winning the Boston Marathon. Coached by a younger priest and former runner, Father Hibbert (Campbell Scott), whose cynicism has been lifted by the boy's pure hope, Ralph applies himself to his unlikely mission, fending off naysayers and getting help along a very challenging path from sundry allies and friends.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys?
The closest matches to The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys are Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), Running with Scissors (2006) and My Girl (1991). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys?
People who watched The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys most often go on to Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), Running with Scissors (2006) and My Girl (1991).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys?
My Girl (1991), rated 7.4/10 by 2,397 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys?
The Altar Boys (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys?
Yes: Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), Running with Scissors (2006) and My Girl (1991).
How are movies similar to The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.