Movies like The Idiots (1998)
The best movies like The Idiots (1998) are Happiness (1998), Another Round (2020) and Gummo (1997). If The Idiots 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 Celebration (1998)7.7/10 from 1,339 votes
- NewestAnother Round (2020)Released 2020
Happiness (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 thisAnother Round (2020)
Four stagnant high school teachers decide to test out a theory that maintaining a constant level of intoxication will improve their overall lives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGummo (1997)
Teenagers Solomon and Tummler kill time in Xenia, Ohio, a small town that has never recovered from the tornado that ravaged the community in the 1970s.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMifune (1999)
Kresten, newly wed, is on the threshold of a great career success in his father-in-law’s company. But when the death of his own father takes him back to his poverty-stricken childhood home, far out in the country, his career plans fall apart. For one thing he has to deal with his loveable, backward brother, who is now all alone; for another, he meets a stunning woman who comes to the farm as a housekeeper, in disguise of her real profession as a call-girl.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Celebration (1998)
The family of a wealthy businessman gather to celebrate his 60th birthday. During the course of the party, his eldest son presents a speech that reveals a devastating secret that turns the night into a battle of truth and denial.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Boss of It All (2006)
The owner of an IT firm wants to sell his business for profit; however, when he started his firm, he invented a nonexistent president to hide behind when unpopular steps needed to be taken. When potential purchasers insist on negotiating with 'The Boss' face to face, the owner hires a failed actor to play the part.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSongs from the Second Floor (2000)
A monumental traffic jam serves as the backdrop for the lives of the inhabitants of a Swedish city.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisShake It All About (2001)
Jacob is a young man used to getting everything he wants. For several years, he has been living in a happy homosexual partnership with Jørgen, and one night Jacob decides to pop the big question to Jørgen. Jørgen happily accepts Jacobs marriage proposal, but then something happens: Jacob falls in love with a girl, and not just any girl. The girl is Caroline, married to Jørgens younger brother Tom.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisYou, the Living (2007)
In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe New Age (1994)
Peter and Katherine Witner are Southern California super-yuppies with great jobs but no center to their lives. When they both lose their jobs and begin marital infidelities, their solution is to start their own business together. In order to find meaning to their empty lives, they follow various New Age gurus and other such groups. Eventually, they hit rock bottom and have to make some hard decisions.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Naked (1993)
An unemployed Brit vents his rage on unsuspecting strangers as he embarks on a nocturnal London odyssey.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Falls (1982)
Told in the form of a mock documentary in 92 short parts, nineteen million people are left obsessed with birds and flight following a strange occurrence. A documentarian analyses the lives of all the survivors whose surnames begin with FALL to uncover the truth behind the event.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy
Sex, Drugs & Taxation (2013)
Maybe the best thing to come out of Scandinavia during the hippie years was, in fact, the story of a radical libertarian and a hedonist capitalist. Their friendship, forged by being outsiders in a conformist country, took them through years of adulation and success, with slight detours into the welcoming arms of vilification and imprisonment. A joyride through taxation, mass travel, hookers and politics. Not feeling too constrained by historical facts, director Christoffer Boe's story of Simon Spies and Mogens Glistrup covers just a few of their decades in a tale of warmth and humour, defiance and eccentricity.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
The Seventh Continent (1989)
Chronicles three years of a middle-class family seemingly caught up in their daily routines, troubled only by minor incidents. Behind their apparent calm and repetitive existence, however, they're planning something much more sinister.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisInvoluntary (2008)
In several unrelated stories, the consequences of putting one's foot down – or failing to do so – are explored.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTwist and Shout (1984)
Danish teens come of age in 1963. Bjorn and Erik are close friends. Bjorn is pursued by Kirsten, a future Stepford wife, but he falls for Anna, who initiates him into love and sex. Erik is somber, caring for his home-bound mentally-ill mother while his strict father rules his life. He desires Kirsten, but she's unattainable. Pregnancy, a horrific abortion, an engagement party, and a revelation about the rectitude of Erik's father lead to a climax: Bjorn and Erik must stand up to controlling adults.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Withnail & I (1987)
Two out-of-work actors -- the anxious, luckless Marwood and his acerbic, alcoholic friend, Withnail -- spend their days drifting between their squalid flat, the unemployment office and the pub. When they take a holiday "by mistake" at the country house of Withnail's flamboyantly gay uncle, Monty, they encounter the unpleasant side of the English countryside: tedium, terrifying locals and torrential rain.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTogether (2000)
Elisabeth leaves her abusive and drunken husband Rolf, and goes to live with her brother, Göran. The year is 1975 and Göran lives in a commune called Together. Living in this leftist commune Elisabeth learns that the world can be viewed from different perspectives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisForce Majeure (2014)
While holidaying in the French Alps, a Swedish family deals with acts of cowardliness as an avalanche breaks out.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBreaking the Waves (1996)
In a small, conservative Scottish village, an oilman is paralyzed in an accident. His wife, who prayed for his return, feels guilty; even more, when he urges her to have sex with another.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this8 ½ Women (1999)
After his wife dies, middle-aged businessman Philip Emmenthal, at the prompting of his playboy son Storey, populates his Geneva villa with eight-and-a-half concubines. Three are from Kyoto, where Storey manages Pachinco palaces. Each has a distinctive personality: a nun, a child bearer, a gambler, a student of Kabuki, a horsewoman with a pet pig, a maid. As a year passes, the women begin asserting their own power.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Acid House (1998)
A surreal triptych adapted by "Trainspotting" author Irvine Welsh from his acclaimed collection of short stories. Combining a vicious sense of humor with hard-talking drama, the film reaches into the hearts and minds of the chemical generation, casting a dark and unholy light into the hidden corners of the human psyche.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDogville (2003)
A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town, she learns that their support has a price.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLife Size (1974)
Michel is a middle-aged man with money and social standing. But he dreams of owning a doll to be his lover. When he finally gets one, he realizes he has become a slave to his own fantasy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Frownland (2008)
Keith is a disturbingly maladjusted social outcast and self-described “troll” whose neuroses plunge him into an unstoppable spiral of self-obliteration as his crummy coupon-selling job, pitiful living situation and last remaining human relationships disintegrate around him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Free Fall (2014)
An old woman flies past six floors after jumping from the roof of her apartment block. Six stories on the poor state of humanity, told with humour and rare imagination to the accompaniment of a pulsating soundtrack from Amon Tobin. A woeful burlesque set in the present by one of Europe’s most original contemporary filmmakers.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Julien Donkey-Boy (1999)
Undiagnosed, untreated and generally untethered schizophrenic Julien lives with his pregnant younger sister, anorexic aspiring wrestler brother, sympathetic grandmother, and severely depressed and abusive German father.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Green Butchers (2003)
Svend and Bjarne work for a butcher in a small Danish town. Fed up with their boss' arrogance, they decide to start their own butcher shop. After dismal beginnings, an unfortunate accident happens which coincides with a large order of meat. One hasty decision leads to another and soon the business thrives. In the meantime, Bjarne has to deal with his twin brother who has been in coma for years following a gruesome car accident.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTrash Humpers (2010)
Follow a small group of elderly “Peeping Toms” through the shadows and margins of an unfamiliar world. Crudely documented by the participants themselves, we follow the debased and shocking actions of a group of true sociopaths the likes of which have never been seen before. Inhabiting a world of broken dreams and beyond the limits of morality, they crash against a torn and frayed America.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy
SnoozefestMovies like thisWilbur Wants to Kill Himself (2002)
The strange comedy film of two close brothers; one, Wilbur, who wants to kill himself, and the other, Harbour, who tries to prevent this. When their father dies leaving them his bookstore they meet a woman who makes their lives a bit better yet with a bit more trouble as well.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Idiots?
The closest matches to The Idiots are Happiness (1998), Another Round (2020) and Gummo (1997). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Idiots?
People who watched The Idiots most often go on to Happiness (1998), Another Round (2020) and Gummo (1997).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Idiots?
The Celebration (1998), rated 7.7/10 by 1,339 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Idiots?
Another Round (2020) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to The Idiots chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Idiots, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.