NoBadPicks

Movies Like Joy

If you loved Joy's Drama storytelling, these films deliver a similar experience — carefully selected for tone, themes, and emotional depth. Each pick includes where to watch it right now.

Top Picks

Shirley
6.8

Shirley

2024

Shirley Chisholm makes a trailblazing run for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination after becoming the first Black woman elected to Congress.

On the Basis of Sex
7.3

On the Basis of Sex

2018

Young lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg teams with her husband Marty to bring a groundbreaking case before the U.S. Court of Appeals and overturn a century of sex discrimination.

Love Story
6.8

Love Story

1970

Harvard Law student Oliver Barrett IV and music student Jennifer Cavilleri share a chemistry they cannot deny - and a love they cannot ignore. Despite their opposite backgrounds, the young couple put their hearts on the line for each other. When they marry, Oliver's wealthy father threatens to disown him. Jenny tries to reconcile the Barrett men, but to no avail.

Riding in Cars with Boys
6.7

Riding in Cars with Boys

2001

In 1965, a young woman with dreams of becoming a writer has a son at the age of 15 and struggles to make things work with the drug-addicted father.

The Safety of Objects
6.4

The Safety of Objects

2002

In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.

Call Jane
6.5

Call Jane

2022

A married woman with an unwanted pregnancy lives in a time in America where she can't get a legal abortion and works with a group of suburban women to find help.

Patch Adams
7.3

Patch Adams

1998

The true story of Dr. Hunter "Patch" Adams, who in the 1970s found that humor is the best medicine, and was willing to do just anything to make his patients laugh—even if it meant risking his own career.

American Pastoral
6.2

American Pastoral

2016

Set in postwar America, a man watches his seemingly perfect life fall apart as his daughter's new political affiliation threatens to destroy their family.

More Movies Like Joy

Ordinary Love
6.8

Ordinary Love

2019

An extraordinary look at the lives of a middle-aged couple in the midst of the wife's breast cancer diagnosis.

Goodbye June
6.6

Goodbye June

2025

Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.

Bastard Out of Carolina
7.1

Bastard Out of Carolina

1996

A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.

Won't Back Down
6.1

Won't Back Down

2012

Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.

Nuremberg
7.3

Nuremberg

2025

In postwar Germany, an American psychiatrist must determine whether Nazi prisoners are fit to go on trial for war crimes, and finds himself in a complex battle of intellect and ethics with Hermann Göring, Hitler's right-hand man.

Skin
6.4

Skin

2009

Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.

Jesus Revolution
6.8

Jesus Revolution

2023

In the 1970s, aimless teenager Greg Laurie searches for all the right things in all the wrong places until he meets Lonnie Frisbee, a charismatic hippie/street preacher. Together with local pastor Chuck Smith, they open the doors of a languishing church to an unexpected revival.

Dallas Buyers Club
7.9

Dallas Buyers Club

2013

Loosely based on the true-life tale of Ron Woodroof, a drug-taking, women-loving, homophobic man who in 1986 was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and given thirty days to live.

2 Hearts
7.2

2 Hearts

2020

When illness strikes two people who are polar opposites, life and death bring them together in surprising ways.

If These Walls Could Talk
6.6

If These Walls Could Talk

1996

A powerful, intimate portrait of three women living in the same house during different eras who all face unplanned pregnancies. The vignettes follow a recently widowed nurse struggling to take control of her life in the early 50s, a mother of four balancing raising a family and maintaining a career in the 70s, and a student making a difficult decision with the help of one woman that will change the course of both their lives in the 90s.

Erin Brockovich
7.4

Erin Brockovich

2000

A twice-divorced mother of three who sees an injustice, takes on the bad guy and wins -- with a little help from her push-up bra. Erin goes to work for an attorney and comes across medical records describing illnesses clustered in one nearby town. She starts investigating and soon exposes a monumental cover-up.

Radioactive
6.6

Radioactive

2020

The story of Nobel Prize winner Maria Skłodowska-Curie and her extraordinary scientific discoveries—through the prism of her marriage to husband Pierre—and the seismic and transformative effects their discovery of radium had on the 20th century.

Why These Movies Are Similar

These recommendations share core qualities with Joy (2024): Drama themes, similar narrative structure, and comparable emotional depth. NoBadPicks uses a combination of TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface films most likely to resonate with fans of Joy.

See full details for Joy (2024)

People Also Search For