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Movies that feel like My Life as a Dog (1985)

If you loved My Life as a Dog, the closest films we have are The Castle (1997), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and My Favorite Year (1982). All three share My Life as a Dog's contemplative and witty feel, which is what we rank on before quality. 7 of the 12 picks below are included with a subscription right now on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads and Netflix and others, checked against today's data.

A boy, obsessed with comparing himself with those less fortunate, experiences a different life at the home of his aunt and uncle in 1959 Sweden.

🍅 100% Rotten Tomatoes7.6 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Lasse Hallströmcontemplativewittyplayfullonelyhopeful

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If My Life as a Dog hit the spot, these will too

The Castle poster
The Castle
1997 · dir. Rob Sitch
🍅 87%7.6drama · comedy

The same preoccupation in both: underdog

The difference: Not nearly as lonely as My Life as a Dog

The quirky Kerrigan family lives together in a makeshift home they built themselves – with great pride and a bizarre attention to detail – a few yards from the edge of Melbourne, Australia's busy Tullamarine Airport. When a building inspector condemns the building and reveals that the government plans to use their land for an airport expansion, Darryl Kerrigan and his brood recruit hack attorney Dennis Denuto and prepare themselves for the fight of their lives.

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The Royal Tenenbaums poster
The Royal Tenenbaums
2001 · dir. Wes Anderson
🍅 81%7.6comedy · drama

Contemplative where it counts, witty underneath

Royal Tenenbaum and his wife Etheline had three children and then they separated. All three children are extraordinary --- all geniuses. Virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster. Most of this was generally considered to be their father's fault. "The Royal Tenenbaums" is the story of the family's sudden, unexpected reunion one recent winter.

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My Favorite Year poster
My Favorite Year
1982 · dir. Richard Benjamin
🍅 97%7.3comedy · drama

Both keep circling back to 1950s

Fledgling comic Benjy Stone can't believe his luck when his childhood hero, the swashbuckling matinee idol Alan Swann, gets booked to appear on the variety show he writes for. But when Swann arrives, he fails to live up to his silver screen image. Instead, he's a drunken womanizer who suffers from stage fright. Benjy is assigned to look after him before the show, and it's all he can do to keep his former idol from going completely off the rails.

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The King of Comedy poster
The King of Comedy
1982 · dir. Martin Scorsese
🍅 89%7.8drama · comedy

Drama with a pulse of play, in both cases

Aspiring comic Rupert Pupkin attempts to achieve success in show business by stalking his idol, a late night talk-show host who craves his own privacy.

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Frances Ha poster
Frances Ha
2013 · dir. Noah Baumbach
🍅 92%7.4comedy · drama

Loneliness is the engine of both

The difference: 28 years apart, and the 2010s show

An aspiring dancer moves to New York City and becomes caught up in a whirlwind of flighty fair-weather friends, diminishing fortunes and career setbacks.

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Smoke poster
Smoke
1995 · dir. Wayne Wang
🍅 89%7.4comedy · drama

Contemplative comedy, and it commits to that

Writer Paul Benjamin is nearly hit by a bus when he leaves Auggie Wren's smoke shop. Stranger Rashid Cole saves his life, and soon middle-aged Paul tells homeless Rashid that he wouldn't mind a short-term housemate. Still grieving over his wife's murder, Paul is moved by both Rashid's quest to reconnect with his father and Auggie's discovery that a woman who might be his daughter is about to give birth.

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The Devil Wears Prada poster
The Devil Wears Prada
2006 · dir. David Frankel
🍅 75%7drama · comedy

Witty drama in both cases

The difference: Critics were much harder on this one

A young woman from the Midwest gets more than she bargained for when she moves to New York to become a writer and ends up as the assistant to the tyrannical, larger-than-life editor-in-chief of a major fashion magazine.

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Little Miss Sunshine poster
Little Miss Sunshine
2006 · dir. Valerie Faris
🍅 91%7.8comedy · drama

Comedy built on play, twice over

A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.

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The Breakfast Club poster
The Breakfast Club
1985 · dir. John Hughes
🍅 87%7.8comedy · drama

Both trade on stillness more than on being drama

Five high school students from different walks of life endure a Saturday detention under a power-hungry principal. The disparate group includes rebel John, princess Claire, outcast Allison, brainy Brian and Andrew, the jock. Each has a chance to tell his or her story, making the others see them a little differently -- and when the day ends, they question whether school will ever be the same.

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Withnail & I poster
Withnail & I
1987 · dir. Bruce Robinson
🍅 84%7.5comedy · drama

Both built around uncle

Two out-of-work actors -- the anxious, luckless Marwood and his acerbic, alcoholic friend, Withnail -- spend their days drifting between their squalid flat, the unemployment office and the pub. When they take a holiday "by mistake" at the country house of Withnail's flamboyantly gay uncle, Monty, they encounter the unpleasant side of the English countryside: tedium, terrifying locals and torrential rain.

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The Big Short poster
The Big Short
2015 · dir. Adam McKay
🍅 89%7.8comedy · drama

Witty comedy in both cases

The men who made millions from a global economic meltdown.

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The Grand Budapest Hotel poster
The Grand Budapest Hotel
2014 · dir. Wes Anderson
🍅 92%8.1comedy · drama

Both sit in the same playful register

The Grand Budapest Hotel tells of a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars and his friendship with a young employee who becomes his trusted protégé. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting, the battle for an enormous family fortune and the slow and then sudden upheavals that transformed Europe during the first half of the 20th century.

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The best-reviewed films that share My Life as a Dog's defining feeling.