Movies Like The Squid and the Whale
If you liked The Squid and the Whale (2005), a comedy and drama movie directed by Noah Baumbach, here are 20 movies with a similar feel, based on TMDB's recommendations. Each one links to its cast, trailer and where it's streaming.
- 1
Landline (2017)
★ 6.2/10Also comedy and dramaA teenager living with her sister and parents in Manhattan during the 1990s discovers that her father is having an affair.
- 2
Igby Goes Down (2002)
★ 6.6/10Also comedy and dramaIgby Slocumb, a rebellious and sarcastic 17-year-old boy, is at war with the stifling world of old money privilege he was born into. With a schizophrenic father, a self-absorbed, distant mother, and a shark-like young…
- 3
Psycho Therapy: The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write About a Serial Killer (2025)
★ 6.8/10Also comedyA struggling writer in the midst of a divorce befriends a retired serial killer who incidentally becomes his marriage counselor by day, and killing counselor for his next book by night.
- 4
Real Women Have Curves (2002)
★ 6.1/10Also comedy and dramaIn East Los Angeles, an 18-year-old struggles between her ambitions of going to college and the desires of her domineering mother for her to get married, have children, and oversee the small, rundown family-owned…
- 5
Crooklyn (1994)
★ 6.8/10Also comedy and dramaFrom Spike Lee comes this vibrant semi-autobiographical portrait of a school-teacher, her stubborn jazz-musician husband and their five kids living in '70s Brooklyn.
- 6
Rushmore (1998)
★ 7.4/10Also comedy and dramaWhen a beautiful first-grade teacher arrives at a prep school, she soon attracts the attention of an ambitious teenager named Max, who quickly falls in love with her. Max turns to the father of two of his schoolmates…
- 7
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)
★ 6.5/10Also comedy and dramaAn estranged family gathers together in New York for an event celebrating the artistic work of their father.
- 8
House of D (2004)
★ 6.3/10Also comedy and dramaIn the present, artist Tom Warshaw recalls his traumatic coming of age. As a 13-year-old growing up in New York City in 1973, Tom hangs out with Pappass, a mentally disabled man. With Tom's mother battling depression…
- 9
The Joneses (2010)
★ 6.2/10Also comedy and dramaA seemingly perfect family moves into a suburban neighborhood, but when it comes to the truth as to why they're living there, they don't exactly come clean with their neighbors.
- 10
Wildflower (2023)
★ 7.4/10Also comedy and dramaThe story of Bea Johnson from birth to graduation as she navigates life with an intellectually disabled parent and an extended family who can't quite agree on the best way to help.
- 11
CQ (2001)
★ 5.9/10Also comedy and dramaA young filmmaker in 1960s Paris juggles directing a cheesy sci-fi debacle, directing his own personal art film, coping with his crumbling relationship with his girlfriend, and a new-found infatuation with the sci-fi…
- 12
Deconstructing Harry (1997)
★ 7.2/10Also comedy and dramaWriter Harry Block draws inspiration from people he knows, and from events that happened to him, sometimes causing these people to become alienated from him as a result.
- 13
The King of Staten Island (2020)
★ 7/10Also comedy and dramaScott has been a case of arrested development ever since his firefighter father died when he was seven. He's now reached his mid-20s having achieved little, chasing a dream of becoming a tattoo artist that seems far…
- 14
Match (2014)
★ 5.8/10Also comedy and dramaA Seattle couple travel to New York to interview colorful former dancer Tobi for research on a dissertation about dance. But soon, common niceties and social graces erode when the questions turn personal and the true…
- 15
The Tender Bar (2021)
★ 6.5/10Also dramaJR is a fatherless boy growing up in the glow of a bar where the bartender, his Uncle Charlie, is the sharpest and most colorful of an assortment of quirky and demonstrative father figures. As the boy’s determined…
- 16
Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989)
★ 6.5/10Also dramaA gallery of characters in Brooklyn in the 1950s are crushed by their surroundings and selves: a union strike leader discovers he is gay; a prostitute falls in love with one of her clients; a family cannot cope with…
- 17
Somewhere in Queens (2023)
★ 6.3/10Also comedy and dramaLeo and Angela Russo live a simple life in Queens, surrounded by their overbearing Italian-American family. When their son finds success on his high school basketball team, Leo tears the family apart trying to make it…
- 18
A Thousand and One (2023)
★ 6.6/10Also dramaStruggling but unapologetically living on her own terms, Inez is moving from shelter to shelter in mid-1990s New York City. With her 6-year-old son Terry in foster care and unable to leave him again, she kidnaps him so…
- 19
Burn After Reading (2008)
★ 6.7/10Also comedy and dramaWhen a disc containing memoirs of a former CIA analyst falls into the hands of gym employees, Linda and Chad, they see a chance to make enough money for Linda to have life-changing cosmetic surgery. Predictably, events…
- 20
Savage House (2026)
★ 7/10Also comedy and dramaAgainst the backdrop of 18th century England, a massive pox outbreak, and Jacobite uprising – Sir Chauncey Savage and Lady Savage blindly pursue a better life. It's not without a tinge of irony that their family name…