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The Spectacular Now poster

Movies that feel likeThe Spectacular Now (2013)

Sutter, a popular party animal, unexpectedly meets the introverted Aimee after waking up on a stranger's lawn. As Sutter deals with the problems in his life and Aimee plans for her future beyond school, an unexpected romance blossoms between them.

If you loved The Spectacular Now, the closest films we have are It's Kind of a Funny Story (2010), Licorice Pizza (2021) and Love, Simon (2018). All three share The Spectacular Now's witty and playful feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is A Summer's Tale (1996).

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If The Spectacular Now hit the spot, these will too

It's Kind of a Funny Story poster
It's Kind of a Funny Story
2010 · dir. Anna Boden
🍅 58%★ 7.1comedy · drama · romance

Both keep coming back to the same thing: growing up

The difference: The critics' underdog of the pair

A clinically depressed teenager gets a new start after he checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward.

Licorice Pizza poster
Licorice Pizza
2021 · dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
🍅 90%★ 7.1drama · comedy · romanceRent or buy

Common ground: growing up

The story of Gary Valentine and Alana Kane growing up, running around and going through the treacherous navigation of first love in the San Fernando Valley, 1973.

Love, Simon poster
Love, Simon
2018 · dir. Greg Berlanti
🍅 92%★ 7.5comedy · drama · romanceMax

The same mix in both: wit, then play

Everyone deserves a great love story, but for 17-year-old Simon Spier, it's a little more complicated. He hasn't told his family or friends that he's gay, and he doesn't know the identity of the anonymous classmate that he's fallen for online.

Show Me Love poster
Show Me Love
1998 · dir. Lukas Moodysson
🍅 93%★ 7.5comedy · romance · drama

Contemplative and romantic in the same breath

Two teenage girls in small-town Sweden. Elin is beautiful, popular, and bored with life. Agnes is friendless, sad, and secretly in love with Elin.

A Summer's Tale poster
A Summer's Tale
1996 · dir. Éric Rohmer
🍅 98%★ 7.6romance · drama · comedyMax

Both land tenderness and wistfulness at once

Awaiting his girlfriend Léna’s arrival at the Breton seaside resort of Dinard, Gaspard befriends — and flirts heavily with — two other women, the companionable ethnology student Margot and the sensual townie Solène, making for a rather complicated situation when Léna finally arrives.

Moonrise Kingdom poster
Moonrise Kingdom
2012 · dir. Wes Anderson
🍅 93%★ 7.7comedy · drama · romance

Witty comedy in both cases

Set on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965, Moonrise Kingdom tells the story of two twelve-year-olds who fall in love, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness. As various authorities try to hunt them down, a violent storm is brewing off-shore – and the peaceful island community is turned upside down in more ways than anyone can handle.

LOL poster
LOL
2012 · dir. Lisa Azuelos
🍅 14%★ 4.4drama · comedy · romancePeacock

The same preoccupation in both: teenager

In a world connected by YouTube, iTunes, and Facebook, Lola and her friends navigate the peer pressures of high school romance and friendship while dodging their sometimes overbearing and confused parents. When Lola's mom, Anne, "accidentally" reads her teenage daughter's racy journal, she realizes just how wide their communication gap has grown.

Cousins poster
Cousins
2019 · dir. Mauro Carvalho
★ 6.3comedy · romance · drama

Both lean on play more than on drama

Lucas is a young man who lives with his religious aunt Lourdes in a quiet country town. He helps his aunt by holding religious meetings with the ladies of the area, in the living room, playing biblical songs on the keyboard. This quiet life will end as soon as the charitable aunt communicates the arrival of another nephew, Mario, just out of jail. The clash of reality between the cousins ends up causing unusual situations, and an unexpected attraction among the boys.

Punch-Drunk Love poster
Punch-Drunk Love
2002 · dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
🍅 79%★ 7.3romance · drama · comedy

Romance with a pulse of stillness, in both cases

A socially awkward and volatile small business owner meets the love of his life after being threatened by a gang of scammers.

Juno poster
Juno
2007 · dir. Jason Reitman
🍅 93%★ 7.4comedy · drama · romance

Comedy built on romance, twice over

Faced with an unplanned pregnancy, sixteen year old high-schooler, Juno MacGuff, makes an unusual decision regarding her unborn child.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl poster
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
2015 · dir. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
🍅 81%★ 7.7drama · comedyRent or buy

One thread runs through both: high school student

The difference: Takes it somewhere less romantic than The Spectacular Now does

Greg is coasting through senior year of high school as anonymously as possible, avoiding social interactions like the plague while secretly making spirited, bizarre films with Earl, his only friend. But both his anonymity and friendship threaten to unravel when his mother forces him to befriend a classmate with leukemia.

Blue Is the Warmest Color poster
Blue Is the Warmest Color
2013 · dir. Abdellatif Kechiche
🍅 88%★ 7.6romance · drama

Both are built on the same subject: high school student

Adèle's life is changed when she meets Emma, a young woman with blue hair, who will allow her to discover desire, to assert herself as a woman and as an adult. In front of others, Adele grows, seeks herself, loses herself, finds herself.

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The best-reviewed films that share The Spectacular Now’s defining feeling.