Movies like The Ugly Story (1966)
The best movies like The Ugly Story (1966) are Almost Friends (2017), The House of Tomorrow (2019) and Code 3 (2025). If The Ugly Story hooked you with its drama and comedy, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedDr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)8.1/10 from 6,482 votes
- NewestCode 3 (2025)Released 2025
Almost Friends (2017)
A man in his mid-20s, still living at home with his mother and stepfather, puts all his eggs in one basket: the girl who works at his local coffee shop. The problem is, she has a serious boyfriend. As they become closer, the line between friendship and intimacy is blurred, and the situation forces both to examine where they are in their lives.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe House of Tomorrow (2019)
The film tells futurist, architect, and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller's incredible story through two teens hoping to get laid, become punk gods, and survive high school.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCode 3 (2025)
A burned-out paramedic tries to survive his last 24 hours on the job while training a new recruit.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSmall Apartments (2012)
When a clumsy deadbeat accidentally kills his landlord, he must do everything in his power to hide the body, only to find that the distractions of lust, the death of his beloved brother, and a crew of misfit characters force him on a journey where a fortune awaits him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisDon't Think Twice (2016)
An improv group deals with several crises, including the loss of their lease and one member hitting the big time.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCQ (2001)
A young filmmaker in 1960s Paris juggles directing a cheesy sci-fi debacle, directing his own personal art film, coping with his crumbling relationship with his girlfriend, and a new-found infatuation with the sci-fi film's starlet.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like this¿Y cómo es él? (2022)
Thomas is a meek man on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Despite his situation he decides to fake a work trip to go to Vallarta to confront Jero, a taxi driver who is sleeping with his wife.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies 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 thisLady Windermere's Fan (1925)
A society woman believes her husband is having an affair, a misconception which may have dire personal consequences for all involved.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTreasure (2024)
A music journalist accompanies her father, a charmingly stubborn Holocaust survivor, on a journey to his homeland. While she's eager to make sense of her family's past, her dad has an agenda of his own.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFat Kid Rules The World (2012)
A dropout comes to the aid of a chubby and suicidal high-school kid by recruiting him as the drummer for his upstart punk-rock band.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOn Becoming a Guinea Fowl (2024)
On an empty road in the middle of the night, Shula stumbles across the body of her uncle. As funeral proceedings begin around them, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisJuniper (2021)
When a self-destructive teenager is suspended from school and asked to look after his feisty alcoholic grandmother as a punishment, the crazy time they spend together turns his life around.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSometimes Always Never (2019)
Alan is a stylish tailor with moves as sharp as his suits. He has spent years searching tirelessly for his missing son Michael who stormed out over a game of Scrabble. With a body to identify and his family torn apart, Alan must repair the relationship with his youngest son and solve the mystery of an online player who he thinks could be Michael, so he can finally move on and reunite his family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPetrov's Flu (2021)
With the city in the throes of a flu epidemic, the Petrov family struggles through yet another day in a country where the past is never past, the present is a booze-fueled, icy fever dream of violence and tenderness, and where – beneath layers of the ordinary – things turn out to be extraordinary.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLandline (2017)
A teenager living with her sister and parents in Manhattan during the 1990s discovers that her father is having an affair.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA King in New York (1957)
A recently-deposed "Estrovian" monarch seeks shelter in New York City, where he becomes an accidental television celebrity. Later, he's wrongly accused of being a Communist and gets caught up in subsequent HUAC hearings.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn the Soup (1992)
An aspiring young filmmaker gets involved with an eccentric gangster for the financing of his first film.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Dog Year (2009)
Jon Katz is close to burnout. He's a writer with writer's block; his wife has left for her sister's because he's emotionally distant; he rarely answers his phone. A kennel sends him a border collie that's undisciplined because of abuse. Despite a series of mishaps, Jon decides to keep trying with the dog, and he rents a dilapidated farm house to give the dog room to run. A local handyman refers Jon to a woman who might be able to help him train the dog. Reluctantly, Jon gives her a try. Is the dog the problem, or the owner?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRogue Agent (2022)
Conman Robert Freegard poses as an undercover MI5 agent and kidnaps countless victims amidst a high-stakes manhunt, until the woman who fell for him brings him to justice.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTaxidermia (2006)
Three stories. Three ages. Three men. Grandfather, father, son. One is an orderly, one is a leading sportsman, and one is a master taxidermist. One desires love, the other success, and the third immortality.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Nine Lives of Tomas Katz (2000)
The last day of creation. A stranger arrives in London. No one knows who he is or where he has come from. By the time he leaves, the entire universe will have been erased.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy & drama
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev travels to America to make a documentary. As he zigzags across the nation, Borat meets real people in real situations with hysterical consequences. His backwards behavior generates strong reactions around him exposing prejudices and hypocrisies in American culture.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Double (1980)
Denev is a specialist in his area. and has no time to write his dissertation. His cousin Ivan offers his help to switch places wich leeds to catostrophe.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Raising Arizona (1987)
When a childless couple—an ex-con and an ex-cop—take one of a wealthy family’s quintuplets to raise as their own, their lives grow more complicated than anticipated.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
After the insane General Jack D. Ripper initiates a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, a war room full of politicians, generals and a Russian diplomat all frantically try to stop it.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisSpaceballs (1987)
When the nefarious Dark Helmet hatches a plan to snatch Princess Vespa and steal her planet's air, space-bum-for-hire Lone Starr and his clueless sidekick fly to the rescue. Along the way, they meet Yogurt, who puts Lone Starr wise to the power of "The Schwartz." Can he master it in time to save the day?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDogma (1999)
An abortion clinic worker with a special heritage is called upon to save the existence of humanity from being negated by two renegade angels trying to exploit a loophole and re-enter Heaven.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNinotchka (1939)
A stern Russian woman sent to Paris on official business finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe American Society of Magical Negroes (2024)
A young man, Aren, is recruited into a secret society of magical Black people who dedicate their lives to a cause of utmost importance: making white people’s lives easier.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Ugly Story?
The closest matches to The Ugly Story are Almost Friends (2017), The House of Tomorrow (2019) and Code 3 (2025). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Ugly Story?
Start with Almost Friends (2017), the closest match to The Ugly Story.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Ugly Story?
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), rated 8.1/10 by 6,482 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Ugly Story?
Code 3 (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to The Ugly Story chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Ugly Story, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.