Movies like Rags to Riches (1993)
The best movies like Rags to Riches (1993) are Stuart: A Life Backwards (2007), Mammal (2016) and The Last Dragon (1985). If Rags to Riches hooked you, these 20 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.

Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Untouchables (1987)7.8/10 from 6,438 votes
- NewestSebastian (2024)Released 2024
Stuart: A Life Backwards (2007)
Story about the remarkable friendship between a reclusive writer and illustrator and a chaotic homeless man, whom he gets to know during a campaign to release two charity workers from prison.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMammal (2016)
After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Last Dragon (1985)
A young man searches for the "master" to obtain the final level of martial arts mastery known as the glow. Along the way he must fight an evil martial arts expert and rescue a beautiful singer from an obsessed music promoter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFrank and Penelope (2022)
A tale of love and violence when a man on his emotional last legs finds a savior seductively dancing in a run-down strip club. And a life most certainly headed off a cliff suddenly becomes redirected - as everything is now worth dying for.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMysterious Skin (2005)
A teenage hustler and a young man obsessed with alien abductions cross paths, together discovering a horrible, liberating truth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisJoe the King (1999)
A destitute 14-year-old struggles to keep his life together despite harsh abuse at his mother's hands, harsher abuse at his father's, and a growing separation from his slightly older brother.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Untouchables (1987)
Elliot Ness, an ambitious prohibition agent, is determined to take down Al Capone. In order to achieve this goal, he forms a group given the nickname “The Untouchables”.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Voyeurs (2021)
When Pippa and Thomas move into their dream apartment, they notice that their windows look directly into the apartment opposite – inviting them to witness the volatile relationship of the attractive couple across the street. But what starts as a simple curiosity turns into full-blown obsession with increasingly dangerous consequences.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJawbone (2017)
A former youth boxing champion, Jimmy McCabe is a man in search of hope but looking in all the wrong places. When he hits rock bottom he turns to his childhood boxing club and the only family he has left: gym owner Bill corner man Eddie and promoter Joe. Back in training, years after anyone thought he was a contender, he risks his life, as he tries to stand tall and regain his place in the world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTigerland (2000)
A group of recruits go through Advanced Infantry Training at Fort Polk, Louisiana's infamous Tigerland, last stop before Vietnam for tens of thousands of young men in 1971.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJungle Fever (1991)
A successful and married black man contemplates having an affair with a white girl from work. He's quite rightly worried that the racial difference would make an already taboo relationship even worse.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSebastian (2024)
Max is a 25-year-old freelance writer and aspiring novelist who seems well on his way to success in London’s cultural spheres. Yet by night, he finds a different kind of exhilaration as a sex worker with the pseudonym Sebastian, meeting men via an escorting platform. Max uses his experiences as Sebastian to fuel his stories and the worthy debut novel that he has been longing to write, finally seems within reach.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGangster No. 1 (2000)
An old gangster is advised that Freddie Mays would leave jail after thirty years in prison. His mood changes and he recalls when he was a young punk and who joined Freddie's gang—a man he both envied and ultimately betrayed.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Killer Inside Me (2010)
Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a pillar of the community in his small west Texas town, patient and apparently thoughtful. Some people think he is a little slow and maybe boring, but that is the worst they say about him. But then nobody knows about what Lou calls his "sickness": He is a brilliant, but disturbed sociopathic sadist.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisWho Is Cletis Tout? (2001)
With a hitman’s gun aimed at him, Finch tells the story of how he broke out of jail, fell in love, and took the identity of a man wanted by the Mafia.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisMeet Monica Velour (2010)
For Tobe, a nerdy, horny, frizzy-haired cineaste who doesn't quite fit in with the average contemporary teen, the pinnacle of womanhood is Monica Velour, a soft-core actress who reached the zenith of her career in the 1980s. When Tobe learns that his love idol is headlining hundreds of miles away at the Gentlemen's Petting Zoo in Indiana, he drives off with carefree glory, filled with the hope of meeting her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Echo (2008)
An ex-prisoner moves to an old apartment, where one gets to see in the middle of a domestic problem between a police officer, his wife and his daughter. When he tries to intervene, he will be caught in a mysterious curse.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGotti (1996)
John Gotti, the head of a small New York mafia crew breaks a few of the old family rules. He rises to become the head of the Gambino family and the most well-known mafia boss in America. Life is good, but suspicion creeps in, and greed, rule-breaking and his high public profile all threaten to topple him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOut for Justice (1991)
Gino Felino is an NYPD detective from Brooklyn who knows everyone and everything in his neighborhood. Killing his partner was someone's big mistake... because he's now out for justice.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisChoke (2008)
A sex-addicted con-man pays for his mother's hospital bills by playing on the sympathies of those who rescue him from choking to death.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Rags to Riches?
The closest matches to Rags to Riches are Stuart: A Life Backwards (2007), Mammal (2016) and The Last Dragon (1985). Below are 17 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Rags to Riches?
Start with Stuart: A Life Backwards (2007), the closest match to Rags to Riches.
What is the highest-rated movie like Rags to Riches?
The Untouchables (1987), rated 7.8/10 by 6,438 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Rags to Riches?
Sebastian (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Rags to Riches?
Yes: Stuart: A Life Backwards (2007), Mammal (2016) and The Last Dragon (1985).
How are movies similar to Rags to Riches chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Rags to Riches, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.



















