Every family has its quirks and crazy relatives. If you’ve found yourself wishing you belonged to a different family lately, check out our top movie picks about dysfunctional families. You might just realize things could always be worse.
1. Girl Most Likely (2012)
Imogene’s (Kristen Wiig) life has hit rock bottom. After having a breakdown, she’s forced to move home with her bat-crazy mother (Annette Bening), but her room’s been rented out to a stranger. Plus, there’s a stranger in her mother’s bed, and Imogene can’t even go to the bathroom in peace.
2. Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)
As if Bridget (Renée Zellweger) doesn’t have enough to worry about — her weight, her calorie- and cigarette-counting and being terminally single — her family has turned dysfunctional overnight. Of course, Uncle Geoffrey has always been a pervert, but now her mother’s bored with her life and left her dad for a TV shopping presenter who’s practically orange.
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3. American Beauty (1999)
Meet the Burnham family. Lester (Kevin Spacey) hates his life and his wife and has fantasies about his daughter Jane’s (Thora Birch) best friend. Carolyn Burnham (Annette Bening) is an unsuccessful realtor who has an affair with a real estate rival. Their daughter has self-esteem issues and hates her life. Meanwhile, next door is the Fitts family. Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley) is supplying drugs to Lester, but his dad thinks they’re gay, and that’s only scratching the surface.
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4. Mental (2012)
The Moochmore family is certifiably crazy. Shirley Moochmore (Rebecca Gibney) is on the verge of a nervous breakdown and sent off by her philandering husband on a “holiday” to a nuthouse. Faced with looking after his five daughters, who are all convinced they’re suffering from mental illness, he picks up a hitchhiker to play the role of their nanny.
5. Meet the Fockers (2004)
Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) wants to ensure his daughter is marrying good stock, but he’s about to discover Greg’s (Ben Stiller) parents are very strange. Greg’s dad is a hippie, and his mum is an open sex therapist. If you think your parents are embarrassing, how do you think Greg Focker feels?
6. Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
The Hoover family is in a league of its own. Olive Hoover (Abigail Breslin) is a pudgy, round, spectacle-wearing little girl who suddenly finds herself in a Miss Sunshine Pageant that prompts a road trip with her dysfunctional family. Uncle Frank (Steve Carell) is a suicidal homosexual and has moved in with the family, Grandpa’s been kicked out of his retirement home for selling heroin, and her stepbrother, Dwayne (Paul Dano), has taken a vow of silence.
7. Back to the Future (1985)
Marty McFly’s (Michael J. Fox) family is a bunch of no-hopers. His father, nerdy George, is bullied by his supervisor, Biff Tannen. His mother, Lorraine, is a chain-smoker and an alcoholic. His older brother, Dave, has amounted to nothing and can’t even afford a car, while his sister, Linda, thrives on listening to her parents retell the story of how they met.
8. The War of the Roses (1989)
If there were an award for the most dysfunctional family ever, it would go to the Roses. Oliver (Michael Douglas) and Barbara Rose (Kathleen Turner) hate everything about each other. When they decide to divorce, it’s all-out war over who gets to keep the mansion. Oliver urinates in a business dinner Barbara was cooking for potential clients. He runs over the family cat. Barbara nails the sauna door shut. It becomes a battle of humiliation until the bitter end.
9. Step Brothers (2008)
Dale Doback (John C. Reilly) and Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) are both unemployable 40-year-olds who still live at home and seem to have the brain capacity of lemons. When their parents shack up, they are forced into sharing a room and living like stepbrothers. From fighting over bunk beds to getting beat up on by kids, it seems these losers are destined for failure.
10. Running with Scissors (2006)
What hope does Augusten Burroughs (Joseph Cross) have when his mother is unstable, his father is an alcoholic, and he’s sent to live with his mum’s family therapist, Dr. Finch, and ends up having to live with a crazy French family of misfits?
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