Movies like Imaginary Heroes (2004)
The best movies like Imaginary Heroes (2004) are Love Liza (2002), The Invisible Circus (2001) and It's Kind of a Funny Story (2010). If Imaginary Heroes 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 ratedHappiness (1998)7.4/10 from 998 votes
- NewestThe Lifeguard (2013)Released 2013
Love Liza (2002)
Following the unexplained suicide of his wife Liza, website designer Wilson Joel turns to huffing gasoline fumes and remote control gaming while avoiding an inevitable conflict with his mother-in-law.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Invisible Circus (2001)
After learning that her sister, Faith, has committed suicide in Portugal, Phoebe, an 18-year-old hippie, decides to uproot from her San Francisco home to travel to Europe. Phoebe hopes to discover and experience the life that led to her sister's death by retracing her footsteps, which eventually leads to Wolf -- Faith's boyfriend. However, as Phoebe's journey continues, a series of visions of Faith pushes her mind to the brink.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisIt's Kind of a Funny Story (2010)
A clinically depressed teenager gets a new start after he checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward.
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 thisShrink (2009)
Unable to cope with a recent personal tragedy, LA's top celebrity shrink turns into a pothead with no concern for his appearance and a creeping sense of his inability to help his patients.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Lifeguard (2013)
Leigh, feeling unfulfilled, quits her reporter job in New York and returns to the place she last felt happy: her childhood home in Connecticut. She takes a job as a lifeguard, regresses into adolescent behavior, and begins a dangerous relationship with a troubled teenager, leading to consequences for everyone involved.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Hanging Garden (1997)
William, a once obese and troubled teen, goes back to his family's home after being gone, without word, for ten years and finds it (and his family) haunted with his past. He had moved to the city and become a fit, well-adjusted gay man, but during his visit home, he becomes unhinged as the newly remembered reasons for his miserable adolescence come to life in each of their presents.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
My Suicide (2009)
After declaring that he's going to film himself committing suicide for a school project, Archie videotapes his surprising interactions with worried family members, interested classmates, unreliable medical experts and the hottest girl in school.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & 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 thisDead Like Me: Life After Death (2009)
When George and her colleagues get a new boss whose focus is on moving souls quickly and enjoying life without consequences, the team begins to break the strict reaper rules. While her friends fall victim to their desires for money, success, and fame, George breaks another rule by revealing her true identity to her living family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies 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 thisThe Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002)
A group of Catholic school friends, after being caught drawing an obscene comic book, plan a heist that will outdo their previous prank and make them local legends.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWristcutters: A Love Story (2007)
Zia, distraught over breaking up with his girlfriend, decides to end it all. Unfortunately, he discovers that there is no real ending, only a run-down afterlife that is strikingly similar to his old one, just a bit worse. Discovering that his ex-girlfriend has also "offed" herself, he sets out on a road trip to find her.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies 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 thisRocket Science (2007)
Hal is a 15-year-old high-school student with a minor yet socially alienating (and painful) disability: he stutters uncontrollably. Determined to work through the problem, Hal opts for an extreme route – he joins the school debating team, which sends him on a headfirst plunge into breakneck speech competitions and offers a much-needed boost toward correcting the problem.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Rules of Attraction (2002)
The incredibly spoiled and overprivileged students of Camden College are a backdrop for an unusual love triangle between a drug dealer, a virgin and a bisexual classmate.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies 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 thisHappiness (1998)
The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLonesome Jim (2005)
After failing to find success as a writer in New York City, Jim slinks back to his family's home in the Midwest to lick his wounds. But his visit is quickly complicated when his angst spreads to his brother, Tim, who promptly decides to drive his car straight into a tree. Under the shadow of his sibling's injurious actions, Jim strikes up an unlikely friendship with Anika, whose centered small-town wisdom gradually rubs off on him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisReach the Rock (1998)
A small town troublemaker, directionless and alienated, ends up spending a night in a jail cell, where he and the police chief engage in a battle of wills and wit.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
World's Greatest Dad (2009)
In the wake of a freak accident, Lance suffers the worst tragedy and the greatest opportunity of his life. He is suddenly faced with the possibility of fame, fortune and popularity, if he can only live with the knowledge of how he got there.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMe and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
Single dad Richard meets Christine, a starving artist who moonlights as a cabbie. They awkwardly attempt to start a romance, but Richard’s divorce has left him emotionally damaged. Meanwhile, Richard’s sons—one a teenager, the other 6-years-old—take part in clumsy experiments with the opposite sex.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies 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 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 thisCharlie Bartlett (2008)
Awkward teenager Charlie Bartlett has trouble fitting in at a new high school. Charlie needs some friends fast, and decides that the best way to find them is to appoint himself the resident psychiatrist. He becomes one of the most popular guys in school by doling out advice and, occasionally, medication, to the student body.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSpanking the Monkey (1994)
Bright young student Raymond Aibelli is forced to sidetrack an important medical internship because his mother, Susan, is recovering from a broken leg. When he isn't tasked with the most mundane aspects of Susan's recuperation, Raymond finds distraction in a neighborhood girl, Toni Peck. But, as Susan begins relying on her son for both physical and emotional needs, Raymond starts developing disturbing and unwanted new yearnings.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Squid and the Whale (2005)
Based on the true childhood experiences of Noah Baumbach and his brother, The Squid and the Whale tells the touching story of two young boys dealing with their parents' divorce in Brooklyn in the 1980s.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisStorytelling (2001)
College and high school serve as the backdrop for two stories about dysfunction and personal turmoil.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisChuck & Buck (2000)
Chuck and Buck are childhood best friends whose lives have taken very different paths. While Chuck moved away and now has a real life, Buck stayed behind and developed a dangerous fixation—on Chuck's life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
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
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Imaginary Heroes?
The closest matches to Imaginary Heroes are Love Liza (2002), The Invisible Circus (2001) and It's Kind of a Funny Story (2010). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Imaginary Heroes?
People who watched Imaginary Heroes most often go on to Love Liza (2002), The Invisible Circus (2001) and It's Kind of a Funny Story (2010).
What is the highest-rated movie like Imaginary Heroes?
Happiness (1998), rated 7.4/10 by 998 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Imaginary Heroes?
The Lifeguard (2013) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Imaginary Heroes?
Yes: Love Liza (2002), The Invisible Circus (2001) and It's Kind of a Funny Story (2010).
How are movies similar to Imaginary Heroes chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Imaginary Heroes, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.