Movies like How Things Do Develop (1914)
The best movies like How Things Do Develop (1914) are Life of the Party (2018), Our Wife (1931) and A Woman (1915). If How Things Do Develop hooked you with its comedy, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedMy Fair Lady (1964)7.5/10 from 1,490 votes
- NewestSketch (2025)Released 2025
Life of the Party (2018)
When her husband suddenly dumps her, longtime dedicated housewife Deanna turns regret into re-set by going back to college... landing in the same class and school as her daughter, who's not entirely sold on the idea. Plunging headlong into the campus experience, the increasingly outspoken Deanna – now Dee Rock – embraces freedom, fun, and frat boys on her own terms, finding her true self in a senior year no one ever expected.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOur Wife (1931)
Oliver is making plans to marry his sweetheart Dulcy with Stan as his best man, but the plans are thwarted when Dulcy's father sees a picture of Ollie and forbids the marriage. The couple plan to elope, and run away to a Justice of the Peace. After typical Laurel and Hardy blundering, they manage to sneak the girl away from her father's house.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Woman (1915)
Mother, father and daughter go to the park. The women doze off on a bench while the father plays a hide-and-seek game with a girl, blindfolded. Charlie leads him into a lake. Both dozing ladies on the bench fall for Charlie and invite him for dinner. The father returns home with a friend. Charlie rushes upstairs and dresses like a woman, shaving his mustache. Both men fall for Charlie.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBeau Hunks (1931)
Stan and Ollie join the French Foreign Legion after Ollie's sweetheart rejects him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisShanghaied (1915)
A shipowner intends to scuttle his ship on its last voyage to get the insurance money. Charlie, a tramp in love with the owner's daughter, is grabbed by the captain and promises to help him shanghai some seamen. The daughter stows away to follow Charlie. Charlie assists in the galley and attempts to serve food during a gale.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI Love My Dad (2022)
A hopelessly estranged father catfishes his son in an attempt to reconnect.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
SnoozefestMovies like thisOld Boys (2018)
In the school-set re-working of Cyrano, an awkward but imaginative pupil helps the handsome but spectacularly dim school-hero pursue the fiery daughter of a visiting French teacher.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSeriously Single (2020)
While her free-living bestie urges her to embrace singlehood, a commitment-craving social media expert can't stop following the life of a former love.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSon of Rambow (2007)
Will is looking for an escape from his family when he encounters Lee, the school bully. Armed with a video camera and a copy of Rambo, Lee plans to make his own action-packed video epic.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Nutty Professor (1963)
A timid, nearsighted chemistry teacher discovers a magical potion that can transform him into a suave and handsome Romeo. The Jekyll and Hyde game works well enough until the concoction starts to wear off at the most embarrassing times.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPretty Persuasion (2005)
A 15-year-old girl incites chaos among her friends and a media frenzy when she accuses her drama teacher of sexual harassment.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
SnoozefestMovies like thisJackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (2013)
86-year-old Irving Zisman is on a journey across America with the most unlikely companion: his 8 year-old grandson, Billy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPlan B (2021)
After a regrettable first sexual encounter, a straight-laced high school student and her slacker best friend have 24 hours to hunt down a Plan B pill in America's heartland.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOliver the Eighth (1934)
Barbershop owners Stan and Ollie answer an ad in the newspaper from a wealthy widow looking for a husband. Ollie only mails in his response and is invited to the widow's mansion. Stan discovers his unmailed letter and insists on tagging along. At the mansion, the widow's creepy butler informs them that the woman is crazy. She was once jilted by an Oliver and now her hobby is marrying Olivers and then slitting their throats. Now the boys must figure out how to escape.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThunderstruck (2012)
After NBA star Kevin Durant switches talent with 16 year old Brian, the teenager becomes the star of his high school team, but Durant starts struggling and eventually learns an important lesson.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAccepted (2006)
A high school slacker who's rejected by every school he applies to opts to create his own institution of higher learning, the South Harmon Institute of Technology, on a rundown piece of property near his hometown.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Fixer Uppers (1935)
Stan and Ollie are greeting card salesmen who agree to help a woman put a spark in her loveless marriage by making her husband jealous.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSketch (2025)
When a young girl’s sketchbook falls into a strange pond, her drawings come to life—chaotic, real, and on the loose. As the town descends into chaos, her family must reunite and stop the monsters they never meant to unleash.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHow High (2001)
Jamal and Silas, two ordinary guys who smoke something magical, pass their college entrance exams with flying colors and end up at Harvard. Ivy League ways are strange but Silas and Jamal take it in a stride -- until their supply of supernatural smoke runs dry. That's when they have to start living by their wits and rely on their natural resources to make the grade.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLuxo Jr. (1986)
A baby lamp finds a ball to play with and it's all fun and games until the ball bursts. Just when the elder Luxo thinks his kid will settle down for a bit, Luxo Jr. finds a ball ten times bigger.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMy Fair Lady (1964)
A snobbish phonetics professor agrees to a wager that he can take a flower girl and make her presentable in high society.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Barbarian Invasions (2003)
In this belated sequel to 'The Decline of the American Empire', middle-aged Montreal college professor, Remy, learns that he is dying of liver cancer. His ex-wife, Louise, asks their estranged son, Sebastian, a successful businessman living in London, to come home. Sebastian makes the impossible happen, using his contacts and disrupting the Canadian healthcare system in every way possible to help his father fight his terminal illness to the bitter end, while reuniting some of Remy's old friends, including Pierre, Alain, Dominique, Diane, and Claude, who return to see their friend before he passes on.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCrazy Race (2003)
Marc owes a criminal a quarter of a million euros. So it's just as well that there's an illegal car rally across Germany to win exactly that amount. Inconveniently, he is now supposed to look after his eight-year-old daughter.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Dan in Real Life (2007)
Advice columnist Dan Burns is an expert on relationships, but somehow struggles to succeed as a brother, a son and a single parent to three precocious daughters. Things get even more complicated when Dan finds out that the woman he falls in love with is actually his brother's new girlfriend.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMatchstick Men (2003)
A phobic con artist and his protege are on the verge of pulling off a lucrative swindle when the con artist's teenage daughter arrives unexpectedly.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisVelipadinte Pusthakam (2017)
Michael Idikkula, a professor in a college, tries to develop a healthy relationship between the students and teachers and raise money for building hostels by making a film in honour of Vishwan.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
The Savages (2007)
A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Taming of the Shrew (1967)
Italy, 16th century. Petruchio, a choleric, lying and poor rural landowner from Verona, arrives in Padua in search of fortune and a wife, while Baptista, a wealthy merchant, announces that he will not allow Bianca, his youngest daughter, to marry until the temperamental and unruly Katherina, his eldest daughter, does.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI Used to Go Here (2020)
Following the lackluster launch of her debut novel, 35-year-old writer Kate Conklin receives an invitation from her former professor and old crush to speak at her alma mater. With her book tour canceled and her ego deflated, Kate takes the trip, hoping it will give her the morale boost she sorely needs. Instead, she falls into a comical regression—from misadventures with eccentric 20-year-olds to feelings of jealousy toward her former professor’s new favorite student.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
SnoozefestMovies like thisFor the Love of Mabel (1913)
A presumably lost film starring Mabel Normand and Roscoe Arbuckle.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like How Things Do Develop?
The closest matches to How Things Do Develop are Life of the Party (2018), Our Wife (1931) and A Woman (1915). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after How Things Do Develop?
Start with Life of the Party (2018), the closest match to How Things Do Develop.
What is the highest-rated movie like How Things Do Develop?
My Fair Lady (1964), rated 7.5/10 by 1,490 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like How Things Do Develop?
Sketch (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like How Things Do Develop?
Yes: Life of the Party (2018), Our Wife (1931) and A Woman (1915).
How are movies similar to How Things Do Develop chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside How Things Do Develop, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.