Movies Like Polyester
If you loved Polyester's Comedy and 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
Serial Mom
Beverly is the perfect happy homemaker, along with her doting husband and two children, but this nuclear family just might explode when her fascination with serial killers collides with her ever-so-proper code of ethics.
The Overnight
Alex, Emily, and their son, RJ, are new to Los Angeles. A chance meeting at the park introduces them to the mysterious Kurt, Charlotte, and Max. A family “playdate” becomes increasingly interesting as the night goes on.
Kinds of Kindness
A triptych fable following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.
Pink Flamingos
Notorious Baltimore criminal and underground figure Divine goes up against Connie & Raymond Marble, a sleazy married couple who make a passionate attempt to humiliate her and seize her tabloid-given title as "The Filthiest Person Alive".
Happiness
The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.
Boogie Nights
Set in 1977, back when sex was safe, pleasure was a business and business was booming, idealistic porn producer Jack Horner aspires to elevate his craft to an art form. Horner discovers Eddie Adams, a hot young talent working as a busboy in a nightclub, and welcomes him into the extended family of movie-makers, misfits and hangers-on that are always around. Adams' rise from nobody to a celebrity adult entertainer is meteoric, and soon the whole world seems to know his porn alter ego, "Dirk Diggler". Now, when disco and drugs are in vogue, fashion is in flux and the party never seems to stop, Adams' dreams of turning sex into stardom are about to collide with cold, hard reality.
Auto Focus
A successful TV star during the 1960s, former "Hogan's Heroes" actor Bob Crane projects a wholesome family-man image, but this front masks his persona as a sex addict who records and photographs his many encounters with women, often with the help of his seedy friend, John Henry Carpenter. This biographical drama reveals how Crane's double life takes its toll on him and his family, and ultimately contributes to his death.
Requiem for a Dream
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.
More Movies Like Polyester
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Single dad Richard meets Christine, a starving artist who moonlights as a cabbie. They awkwardly attempt to start a romance, but Richard’s divorce has left him emotionally damaged. Meanwhile, Richard’s sons—one a teenager, the other 6-years-old—take part in clumsy experiments with the opposite sex.
Desperate Living
After killing her husband, Peggy Gravel and her murderous maid Grizelda wind up in the crazy town of Mortville, where Queen Carlotta presides over a sleazy collection of misfits.
The Poker House
Agnes and her two sisters struggle through a day in a home overrun by gamblers, thieves, and johns.
May December
Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under the pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.
Cecil B. Demented
A young lunatic director and his devoted cult of cinema terrorists kidnap a Hollywood movie goddess and force her to star in their radical underground movie.
Friendship
Suburban dad Craig falls hard for his charismatic new neighbor Austin, and his attempts to make an adult male friend threatens to ruin both of their lives.
Palindromes
Aviva is thirteen, awkward and sensitive. Her mother Joyce is warm and loving, as is her father, Steve, a regular guy who does have a fierce temper from time to time. The film revolves around her family, friends and neighbors.
A Thousand and One
Struggling 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 they can build their life together. As the years go by, their family grows and Terry becomes a smart yet quiet teenager, but the secret that has defined their lives threatens to destroy the home they have so improbably built.
Bad Moms
When three overworked and under-appreciated moms are pushed beyond their limits, they ditch their conventional responsibilities for a jolt of long overdue freedom, fun, and comedic self-indulgence.
Beau Is Afraid
Following the sudden death of his mother, a mild-mannered but anxiety-ridden man confronts his darkest fears as he embarks on an epic odyssey back home.
City Island
The Rizzos, a family who doesn't share their habits, aspirations, and careers with one another, find their delicate web of lies disturbed by the arrival of a young ex-con brought home by Vince, the patriarch of the family, who is a corrections officer in real life, and a hopeful actor in private.
Mystery Team
A group of former Encyclopedia Brown-style child-detectives struggle to solve an adult mystery.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Polyester (1981): Comedy and 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 Polyester.
See full details for Polyester (1981)