Film

Landline

Name: Landline
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Released: 2017
Cast: Jenny Slate, Abby Quinn, Edie Falco, John Turturro, Jay Duplass

Drama

A 1990s family drama about two sisters navigating adolescence, adult disappointment, and their parents' fractured marriage in Manhattan. Landline trades explosive confrontation for quiet observation—it's a film about how families hold themselves together through small deceptions, and how love survives when it shouldn't. Warm, messy, and genuinely funny about the specific mortification of being young.

TMDb rating

3.1

If you liked this

The Farewell2019

Another intimate family drama that finds humour and heartbreak in the gap between what's said and what's felt. Awkwafina and director Lulu Wang capture that same specificity about cultural and generational friction that makes Landline breathe.

But It's quieter and more elegiac than you might expect from a film about a family gathering. Some find the pacing meandering rather than meditative.

Lady Bird2017

Greta Gerwig's portrait of a girl at odds with her mother, her town, and herself. Like Landline, it's about the small betrayals that families inflict on each other and somehow survive. Tender without being sentimental.

But The ending commits fully to ambiguity and grace rather than resolution. If you need your characters to learn a clean lesson, you'll find this frustrating.

Obvious Child2014

Gillian Robespierre's film shares Landline's gift for making you laugh at things that would normally devastate you. It's about a woman's life upending itself and choosing her own path. Messy, smart, deeply humane.

But The subject matter is deliberately provocative and the tone stays conversational rather than reverent. Some viewers find that disrespectful rather than liberating.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Landline

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)2017

Both are precise portraits of New York families navigating love as a failure to communicate. They operate from the same understanding that family is what happens when affection and resentment are permanently tangled.

Noah Baumbach's film about three adult siblings and their aging father in New York, made the same year as Landline. Both are fascinated by how families wound each other through proximity and disappointment, and both find strange grace in that mess.

But Baumbach's camera is cold where Slate's is warm. The film earns its sadness but doesn't soften it. If you want catharsis, this offers only hard-won acceptance.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) poster

Enough Said2013

A film about adults trying and failing to make sense of desire and commitment. Nicole Holofcener brings the same gentle, observant comedy to middle-aged disappointment that Landline brings to adolescent chaos. Sad and funny in equal measure.

But It moves slowly and trusts you to find the drama in ordinary moments. If you want plot momentum, this will feel static.

Mistress America2015

Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig's film about a lonely college girl and her newly discovered stepsister. It captures that particular hysteria of family chaos, the way comedy and sadness tangle together. Improvisational and alive.

But The energy is deliberately frantic and some moments of dialogue feel unfinished. Its cheerful messiness won't appeal to those who want tight, polished filmmaking.

Boyhood2014

Richard Linklater's marathon observation of a boy's life across twelve years. Like Landline, it's interested in the small, true moments that accumulate into a life—the conversations, the disappointments, the way families fail and persist.

But It's nearly three hours and the plot is deliberately minimal. Patience with duration and stillness is mandatory, and many find that a deal-breaker.

Fleabag2016

A sharp, funny, deeply felt show about a woman's family imploding. Phoebe Waller-Bridge captures something similar to Landline: the way you can love someone and be infuriated by them, the way shame and humour coexist in families.

But The first season has a more frantic, slightly harder edge than Landline. Some find the main character too selfish to root for in those early episodes.

The Mindy Project2012

Though it becomes more romantic comedy as it goes, the early seasons have that specific NYC charm and that ability to find absurdity in real emotion. Mindy Kaling's sensibility is warm and silly without being dismissive of actual stakes.

But The show's tone shifts significantly across its run. Starting it is committing to a series that becomes increasingly concerned with romantic resolution rather than character observation.

Daria1997

An MTV cartoon about adolescence that understands family dysfunction and social awkwardness with genuine intelligence. Its comedy comes from observation rather than cruelty. A different medium, same emotional literacy as Landline.

But It's from the late '90s and some jokes don't age perfectly. More importantly, the animation style is deliberately flat—if you need cinematic beauty, you won't find it.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind2004

Both understand that the deepest relationships are defined by what goes unsaid and unfixed. They're both elegies for connections that survive their own collapse.

A science-fiction film about the traces people leave in each other, the way love is inseparable from pain, and whether it's better to remember or forget. Like Landline, it's about a family (in this case, a former couple) and the small, true things that bind us even when we're breaking apart.

But The narrative structure jumps in time and the visual effects are deliberately dreamlike. If you need linearity and emotional clarity, the formal experiment will feel like obstruction rather than poetry.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind poster

Krisha2016

Like Landline, Krisha finds the tragedy in ordinary family moments. Both films understand that you don't need plot explosions to break a heart—proximity and silence are enough. Both are made with the kind of specificity that suggests deep, painful autobiography.

Ari Aster's debut is a 78-minute family drama shot on digital video that feels like you're watching a memory. A man returns to his parents' house after addiction; the film observes the small, unbearable moments between them. Devastatingly intimate.

But It's shot in a deliberately rough, handheld style that's not conventionally beautiful. The pacing is glacial and there is no catharsis or resolution—it ends exactly where the pain is worst.