Movies like December Boys (2007)
The best movies like December Boys (2007) are Submarine (2011), Junkyard Dog (2023) and Atonement (2007). If December Boys hooked you with its drama and romance, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Intouchables (2011)8.3/10 from 19,051 votes
- NewestJunkyard Dog (2023)Released 2023
Submarine (2011)
15-year-old deep-thinking Welsh schoolboy Oliver Tate struggles to initiate and maintain a relationship with Jordana, his devilish, dark-haired classmate at their Swansea high school. As his parents' marriage begins to fall apart, similar problems arise in his relationship with Jordana.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisJunkyard Dog (2023)
Childhood pals Dog and Mirales live in a little village in the south of France and spend their days just hanging out. To kill time, Mirales has got into the habit of teasing Dog mercilessly. But this summer is different: Dog meets Elsa and romance blossoms.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAtonement (2007)
A young girl irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he did not commit.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Intouchables (2011)
A true story of two men who should never have met – a quadriplegic aristocrat who was injured in a paragliding accident and a young man from the projects.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Art of Getting By (2011)
George, a lonely and fatalistic teen who's made it all the way to his senior year without ever having done a real day of work, is befriended by Sally, a popular but complicated girl who recognizes in him a kindred spirit.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisShelter (2007)
Forced to give up his dreams of art school, Zach works dead-end jobs to support his sister and her son. Questioning his life, he paints, surfs and hangs out with his best friend, Gabe. When Gabe's older brother returns home for the summer, Zach suddenly finds himself drawn into a relationship he didn't expect.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
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 drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1991. High school freshman Charlie is a wallflower, always watching life from the sidelines, until two senior students, Sam and her stepbrother Patrick, become his mentors, helping him discover the joys of friendship, music and love.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNewcastle (2008)
17-year old Jesse lives in the shadow of his older brother Victor's failure to become surfing's Next Big Thing. Even when he's in his natural habitat of magnificent surf breaks, his blue-collar future is brought home by the coal barges that constantly line his horizon. Jesse has the natural skills to surf his way out of this reality and onto the international circuit but can he overcome his equally natural ability to sabotage himself? A momentous weekend away with his mates that includes first love and tragedy leads him to discover what's really important, and also to the performance of a lifetime.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
Albatross (2011)
Beth, a bookish teenager, befriends Emilia, an aspiring novelist who has just arrived in town. Emilia soon begins an affair with Beth's father that threatens to have devastating consequences.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWords and Pictures (2014)
An art instructor and an English teacher form a rivalry that ends up with a competition at their school in which students decide whether words or pictures are more important.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Notebook (2004)
An epic love story centered around an older man who reads aloud to a woman with Alzheimer's. From a faded notebook, the old man's words bring to life the story about a couple who is separated by World War II, and is then passionately reunited, seven years later, after they have taken different paths.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain (1995)
When an English cartographer arrives in Wales to tell the residents of the Welsh village of Ffynnon Garw that their 'mountain' is only a hill, the offended community sets out to remedy the situation.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBreaking and Entering (2006)
Set in a blighted, inner-city neighbourhood of London, Breaking and Entering examines an affair which unfolds between a successful British landscape architect and Amira, a Bosnian woman – the mother of a troubled teen son – who was widowed by the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMuriel's Wedding (1994)
Socially awkward Muriel Heslop wants nothing more than to get married. Unfortunately, due to her oppressive politician father, Muriel has never even been on a date. Ostracized by her more socially adept friends, Muriel runs into fellow outcast Rhonda Epinstalk, and the two move from their small Australian town to the big city of Sydney, where Muriel changes her name and begins the arduous task of redesigning her life to match her fantasies.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Name Is Khan (2010)
Rizwan Khan, a Muslim from the Borivali section of Mumbai, has Asperger's syndrome. He marries a Hindu single mother, Mandira, in San Francisco. After 9/11, Rizwan is detained by authorities at LAX who treat him as a terrorist because of his condition and his race.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisTolkien (2019)
England, early 20th century. The future writer and philologist John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) and three of his schoolmates create a strong bond between them as they share the same passion for literature and art, a true fellowship that strengthens as they grow up, but the outbreak of World War I threatens to shatter it.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAn Education (2009)
Despite her sheltered upbringing, Jenny is a teen with a bright future; she's smart, pretty, and has aspirations of attending Oxford University. When David, a charming but much older suitor, motors into her life in a shiny automobile, Jenny gets a taste of adult life that she won't soon forget.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisClosing the Ring (2007)
During the 1940s, a group of young men go off to war, leaving behind Ethel Ann, who is in love with one of them, Teddy. In modern-day Belfast, a man named Jimmy endeavors to return a ring found in the wreckage of a crashed plane. He travels to Michigan, where the grown Ethel Ann, who married another man after Teddy was killed in battle, now lives. Ethel Ann must decide whether to go with Jimmy to meet the soldier who last saw Teddy alive.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Cure (1995)
Erik, a loner, finds a friend in Dexter, an eleven-year-old boy with AIDS. They vow to find a cure for AIDS together and save Dexter's life in an eventful summer.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisTotal Eclipse (1995)
Young, wild poet Arthur Rimbaud and his mentor Paul Verlaine engage in a fierce, forbidden romance while feeling the effects of a hellish artistic lifestyle.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
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 & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisProzac Nation (2003)
When talented young writer Elizabeth Wurtzel earns a scholarship to Harvard, she sees it as her chance to escape the pressures of her working-class background and concentrate on her true talent. But what starts out so promising leads to self-destructive behavior and paralyzing depression that reflects an entire generation's struggle to navigate the effects of divorce, drugs, sex, and high expectations.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDisco Pigs (2001)
Pig and Runt born on the same day, in the same hospital, moments apart. Twins, all but by bloodline. Inseparable from birth, they are almost telepathic. They are one, needing no one else, inhabiting a delicate, insular and dangerous world where they make their own rules and have their own language. But days before their 17th birthday the balance of their world begins to shift. Pig's sexual awakening and jealousy begins to threaten their private universe.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisIn Love and War (1996)
After teenage ambulance driver Ernest Hemingway takes shrapnel in the leg during World War I, he falls in love with Agnes von Kurowsky, a beautiful older nurse at the hospital where he's sent to recover. Their affair slowly blossoms, until Hemingway boldly asks Agnes to be his wife and journey to America with him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisDead Poets Society (1989)
At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisStanding Up (2013)
Based on one of the most beloved Young Adult novels of all time: Two kids are stripped naked and left together on an island in a lake - victims of a vicious summer camp prank; But rather than have to return to camp and face the humiliation, they decide to take off, on the run together. What follows is a three day odyssey of discovery and self-discovery.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTwo Lovers and a Bear (2016)
Set in a small town near the North Pole where roads lead to nowhere, the story follows Roman and Lucy, two burning souls who come together to make a leap for life and inner peace.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSwinging Safari (2018)
1975: A 200-ton blue whale gets washed up on a local beach and the kids think it’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened in Australia. Behind closed doors, the Mums and Dads of a quiet suburban street are going to celebrate in their own special way, by joining the sexual revolution and throwing a wife-swapping key party. And like the rotting whale, it’s all about to go spectacularly wrong.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisSpud (2010)
It's South Africa 1990. Two major events are about to happen: The release of Nelson Mandela and, more importantly, it's Spud Milton's first year at an elite boys only private boarding school. Spud is a boy from an ordinary background who wins a scholarship to a private school in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. Surrounded by boys with nicknames like Gecko, Rambo, Rain Man and Mad Dog, Spud has his hands full trying to adapt to his new home.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
Like December Boys and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like December Boys?
The closest matches to December Boys are Submarine (2011), Junkyard Dog (2023) and Atonement (2007). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after December Boys?
People who watched December Boys most often go on to Submarine (2011), Junkyard Dog (2023) and Atonement (2007).
What is the highest-rated movie like December Boys?
The Intouchables (2011), rated 8.3/10 by 19,051 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like December Boys?
Junkyard Dog (2023) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like December Boys?
Yes: Submarine (2011), Atonement (2007) and The Art of Getting By (2011).
How are movies similar to December Boys chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside December Boys, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.