Movies Similar to The Happiness Playbook

Moulin Rouge!(2001)

A celebration of love and creative inspiration takes place in the infamous, gaudy and glamorous Parisian nightclub, at the cusp of the 20th century. A young poet, who is plunged into the heady world of Moulin Rouge, begins a passionate affair with the club's most notorious and beautiful star.

7.5

Closer(2004)

A love story about chance meetings, instant attractions, and casual betrayals. Four strangers - with one thing in common: each other.

6.8

The Garden That Doesn't Exist(2022)

Once upon a time there was a garden, a refuge, a safe haven - 'The Garden of the Finzi Continis'. It came to life in Giorgio Bassani's 1962 semi-autobiographical novel recounting an unfulfilled love story between two young Jews in Ferrara, while fascism was raging in Italy in the late 1930's. In 1972, Vittorio De Sica's film adaptation of the book won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Since then, the fictional space of the garden became so tangible that people from all over the world come to Ferrara to look for it. Fifty years after winning the Oscar, reality and fiction come together once more, as we walk through an imaginary garden and bring to life the book, its author, its main protagonists, history, love, friendships and betrayals.

6.2

Manhattan(1979)

Manhattan explores how the life of a middle-aged television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.

7.7

Love in Whitbrooke(2021)

An ambitious project manager is offered the career opportunity of a lifetime in London. But when she returns to her hometown to help the family business in an emergency and meets the perfect guy, her passion and talent for painting is rekindled, giving her a new outlook on life and love.

6.8

A Dash of Love(2017)

A young woman who dreams of opening her own restaurant lands a job at a prominent restaurant whose head chef becomes her unlikely ally when the restaurant's unscrupulous owner, a Master Chef herself, plots to return the place to its former glory by presenting her new assistant's recipes as her own.

6.2

An Uncommon Grace(2017)

An army nurse returning from Afghanistan discovers her purpose in a rural Ohio farm community, along with a deep connection with a neighbor whose conservative Amish sect strictly forbids relationships with those outside his church community.

6.5

The Front(1976)

A cashier poses as a writer for blacklisted talents to submit their work through, but the injustice around him pushes him to take a stand.

7.0

Trick(1999)

Gabriel is a young, aspiring musical composer whose life seems stuck in the First Act. When his new musical number gets a critical reception, a theatre colleague, Perry, tells Gabriel that he needs to get a life before he can write about one – so he heads straight for his local gay bar.

7.0

She Loves Me Not(2013)

A reclusive novelist struggles to find romance and meaning in his life despite disastrous and comedic circumstances.

4.3

Right in Front of Me(2021)

Carly gets a second chance at romance with her college crush but isn’t sure how to impress him until her new friend Nick starts giving her advice. Soon she learns who the right man for her really is.

6.6

Arsenic and Old Lace(1944)

Mortimer Brewster, a newspaper drama critic, playwright, and author known for his diatribes against marriage, suddenly falls in love and gets married; but when he makes a quick trip home to tell his two maiden aunts, he finds out his aunts' hobby - killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar!

7.6

The Way to the Heart(2024)

Ava, an award-winning chef at a big-city restaurant, has lost her spark. Her boss sends her out to find herself to save her menu and her job. She returns home and finds little to inspire her, but when she reunites with her childhood friend Logan, Ava has to get her head out of the clouds and her foot out of her mouth to rediscover her passion for food.

9.9

The Beach Bum(2019)

An irreverent comedy about the misadventures of Moondog, a rebellious stoner and lovable rogue who lives large.

5.7

Naked Ambition 3D(2014)

An honors graduate in literature, Wyman is stuck writing cheap erotic fiction, but somehow ends up starring in an AV film. Suddenly a porn superstar in Japan, he discovers a whole new world fraught with pleasure, pain and more twists and turns than he or the audience expects.

5.1

The Seven Year Itch(1955)

With his family away for their annual summer holiday, a publishing executive decides to live a bachelor's life. The beautiful but ditzy blonde from the apartment above catches his eye and they soon start spending time together—maybe a little too much time!

7.1

The Squid and the Whale(2005)

Based on the true childhood experiences of Noah Baumbach and his brother, The Squid and the Whale tells the touching story of two young boys dealing with their parents' divorce in Brooklyn in the 1980s.

7.0

Stay Cool(2009)

A successful author is forced to confront an unrequited high school crush when he returns home to deliver a commencement address to graduating seniors. Shasta O'Neil, a sexy high school senior flirts with the visiting author and invites him to the prom.

4.9

Smoke(1995)

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.

7.2

Shadowlands(1993)

C.S. Lewis, a world-renowned writer and professor, leads a passionless life until he meets spirited poet Joy Gresham.

6.9