Film

The Climb

The Climb charts a fractured friendship through decades of betrayal, forgiveness, and stubborn loyalty. Two men—one endlessly patient, one catastrophically selfish—keep choosing each other despite mounting reasons not to. It's awkward, funny, and genuinely moving, examining what we owe the people we love most.

TMDb rating3.1

If you liked this

The King of Comedy1982

A bruising portrait of friendship corrupted by envy and enablement. Scorsese captures the same claustrophobic codependency, the way proximity to someone can metastasize into mutual destruction.

But A slower, darker film with a genuinely unsettling protagonist. Not warm, not generous—it demands patience with monstrousness.

The King of Comedy poster

Forgetting Sarah Marshall2008

A breakup comedy that actually understands loss and humiliation without sentimentalizing either. Sharp, genuinely funny, and interested in how people negotiate second chances.

But Leans harder into broad comedy than The Climb. If you want something more grounded, this skews lighter.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall poster

Synecdoche, New York2008

Kaufman's obsessive exploration of how we construct meaning through relationships. Dense, strange, and deeply concerned with how we fail the people closest to us.

But Willfully abstract and hermetic. Some find it pretentious; it genuinely is difficult to parse.

Synecdoche, New York poster

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

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind2004

Both films argue that some relationships are worth their own wreckage. Both men choose each other the way Joel and Clementine choose to erase each other: not rationally, but inevitably.

A science-fiction meditation on whether love is worth its devastation. Two people who've hurt each other attempt to unmake their shared history—and discover they can't.

But Formally experimental and conceptually dense. Emotionally demanding in ways that aren't cathartic—it leaves you genuinely unsettled.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind poster
More like this (8)

Fleabag2016

A TV series about self-sabotage, family entanglement, and the people we keep coming back to despite everything. Funny, sad, brutally honest about complicity.

But Six episodes per season means rapid tonal shifts. Some find the fourth-wall breaks gimmicky rather than charming.

Fleabag poster

The Farewell2019

Explores how love and deception can be inseparable—how we hurt people in the name of protection. Tonally nimble and deeply felt.

But Structured around a family secret that some viewers find frustrating rather than poignant. Slower paced than The Climb.

The Farewell poster

Dinner for Schmucks2010

A comedy about parasitic friendship and weaponized niceness. Paul Rudd's patient bewilderment mirrors Kyle's dynamic, though played here for bigger laughs.

But Broader and more conventionally structured. Less interested in the actual pain underneath the chaos.

Dinner for Schmucks poster

Love, Death & Robots2019

An anthology that circles repeatedly around intimacy, obligation, and what we're willing to endure for connection. Each episode is a small, perfect examination of human dysfunction.

But Wildly uneven by design—some episodes work brilliantly, others miss entirely. Animated, so tone varies drastically.

Love, Death & Robots poster

Before Sunrise1995

Linklater's most generous film about two people unable to stop talking to each other despite knowing it will complicate their lives. Proof that longing is as real as action.

But Literally just conversation. If dialogue without incident bores you, this will too.

Before Sunrise poster

The Sapphires2012

A crowd-pleaser about found family, loyalty across differences, and people choosing each other repeatedly. Warm and unpretentious.

But More earnest than complex. Resolves its conflicts too neatly for anyone seeking deeper friction.

The Sapphires poster

Harakiri1962

Both are films about men bound by rituals of their own making, locked into patterns of self-harm through stubborn fidelity to a relationship. Both ask: what is loyalty worth?

Masaki Kobayashi's masterpiece about the loyalty that destroys us. A samurai examines codes of honor and obligation through grief and rage. Extraordinary cinematography and brutal emotional clarity.

But A 1960s Japanese film about ritual suicide. Deliberately paced, visually austere, genuinely tragic. Not comforting.

Harakiri poster

Cheap Thrills2013

Like The Climb, it's structured as the slow degradation of a friendship through escalating betrayals. But where The Climb sees tenderness in the wreckage, Cheap Thrills sees only the wreckage. It's The Climb's dark mirror.

Two down-and-out acquaintances are offered increasingly obscene amounts of money to humiliate each other on a stranger's whim. A dark comedy about how financial desperation corrodes ethics and friendship.

But Deeply uncomfortable in its second half. Not funny—tragic. Genuinely disturbing in ways it doesn't apologize for.

Cheap Thrills poster

People

Cast

Directing

Production

Recommended by