Movies Like Rags to Riches

If you liked Rags to Riches (1993), a movie directed by Chi Chi LaRue, 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
Mammal (2016)
★ 6.3/10
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…
2
Stuart: A Life Backwards (2007)
★ 7.4/10
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.
3
Frank and Penelope (2022)
★ 7.3/10
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…
4
Mysterious Skin (2005)
★ 7.7/10
A teenage hustler and a young man obsessed with alien abductions cross paths, together discovering a horrible, liberating truth.
5
The Voyeurs (2021)
★ 6.5/10
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…
6
Jungle Fever (1991)
★ 6.4/10
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.
7
Jawbone (2017)
★ 6.1/10
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…
8
Tigerland (2000)
★ 6.6/10
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.
9
Payback (1999)
★ 6.8/10
With friends like these, who needs enemies? That's the question bad guy Porter is left asking after his wife and partner steal his heist money and leave him for dead -- or so they think. Five months and an endless…
10
The Killer Inside Me (2010)
★ 5.8/10
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…
11
Sebastian (2024)
★ 6.5/10
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…
12
Out for Justice (1991)
★ 6.2/10
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.
13
Gotti (1996)
★ 6.6/10
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…
14
Choke (2008)
★ 6.1/10
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.
15
Oldboy (2013)
★ 5.9/10
A man has only three and a half days and limited resources to discover why he was imprisoned in a nondescript room for 20 years without any explanation.
16
Angel Town (1990)
★ 6.6/10
A graduate student and martial-arts expert rents a room in a house owned by a single mother who lives there with her son. A local street gang is trying to recruit the son, but the new tenant tries to help the boy's…
17
Saint Catherine (2024)
★ 6.2/10
An orphaned girl is rescued from a satanic ritual and taken to Saint Catherine Institute for homeless youth. There she will learn new skills while facing demons that stalk her.
18
Joe the King (1999)
★ 5.8/10
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.
19
American Mary (2013)
★ 6.3/10
A young medical student struggling to pay tuition is drawn into the shady world of underground body-modification.
20
Hustle & Flow (2005)
★ 7.2/10
With help from his friends, a Memphis pimp in a mid-life crisis attempts to become a successful hip-hop emcee.