Film

This Is Where I Leave You

This Is Where I Leave You gathers four squabbling adult siblings back under one roof after their father's death, forced into a week of shiva by his dying wish and their mother's unnerving candour. It's an ensemble dramedy in the mid-2000s indie mould — old resentments, new confessions, everyone back in their childhood bedroom. Funnier than it is wise, but a comfortable, star-stuffed watch for anyone who still flinches at family holidays.

TMDb rating6.7

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August: Osage County2013

Same engine — grief pulling a scattered family back to one house, secrets surfacing over shared meals — but Meryl Streep and a murderers' row of actors go for blood instead of laughs. Riveting stuff.

But It trades charm for cruelty almost entirely; there's little warmth here, and some viewers find it exhausting rather than cathartic.

August: Osage County poster

Rachel Getting Married2008

A messier, handheld version of the same idea: a family reunion, this time a wedding, that drags every old wound into the light like a home video nobody agreed to make.

But The shaky camera and raw improvisational style can feel claustrophobic rather than intimate if you prefer polish.

Rachel Getting Married poster

The Family Stone2005

Another starry ensemble crammed into one house over a holiday, mixing comedy with illness and grief in the same bittersweet shrug. Diane Keaton anchors it beautifully.

But The tonal swings are abrupt — it can lurch from farce to devastating within a single scene without much warning.

The Family Stone poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Dick Johnson Is Dead2020

Same impulse — using dark comedy to rehearse a parent's death before it happens — except this is nonfiction: filmmaker Kirsten Johnson actually stages her father's death to prepare herself for losing him.

A wildly inventive documentary that finds real, aching comedy in imagining a parent's death in advance, complete with fantastical staged funeral sequences. Stranger, sadder and more original than almost anything else on this list.

But It's unclassifiable and emotionally unpredictable — if you want tidy narrative comfort, this experimental format won't give it to you.

Dick Johnson Is Dead poster
More like this (8)

Dan in Real Life2007no page yet

Steve Carell plays a widower squeezed into a chaotic family lake house, and the film finds the same gentle comedy in too many relatives and old roles nobody's allowed to outgrow.

But It's softer and more sentimental — if you liked this film's edge, that one sands it right down.

Home for the Holidays1995

Jodie Foster's underseen dramedy about a disastrous Thanksgiving has that exact mix of affection and exasperation, with a first-rate ensemble treating dysfunction as comedy rather than crisis.

But It's dated in places and the pacing meanders; it never quite decides how much of a comedy it wants to be.

Home for the Holidays poster

Our Idiot Brother2011no page yet

Paul Rudd's hapless optimist crashes through three siblings' lives and accidentally fixes and wrecks things in equal measure — same shape of family chaos, played looser and sillier.

But It's slighter and more of a hangout comedy; don't expect the same emotional payoff at the end.

You Can Count on Me2000

A quieter, more literary take on adult siblings renegotiating their bond. Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo are extraordinary, and the humour here is drier, sadder, more earned.

But There's far less comedy and no starry ensemble — it's a two-hander, and a slow-burn one at that.

You Can Count on Me poster

Little Miss Sunshine2006

A different flavour of family-forced-together comedy — a road trip instead of a house arrest — but the same DNA of grief and failure expressed through bickering rather than speeches.

But It's more whimsical and less grounded in real grief; the tone is broader and the ending considerably sweeter.

Little Miss Sunshine poster

Pieces of April2003no page yet

A small, scrappy indie about a fractured family converging for one fraught holiday meal, anchored by a terminally ill mother — the same bittersweet mix at a fraction of the budget.

But The shoestring look and small scale might feel thin after this film's starrier gloss.

You Can't Take It with You1938

The blueprint for this exact house-full-of-eccentric-relatives comedy, decades before indie dramedies claimed the format — Capra crams in-laws, exes and oddballs under one roof and lets the chaos do the talking.

A Best Picture winner that proves the loud, overstuffed family comedy is nearly ninety years old. It's fast, warm, and funnier than you'd expect from 1938.

But The black-and-white screwball rhythms and dated gender politics take some adjustment if you're used to modern pacing.

You Can't Take It with You poster

Departures2008

Trades the shiva-week bickering for a hushed meditation on the same core question — how a family actually confronts a body and a death — as a cellist becomes an encoffiner preparing corpses for funerals.

An Oscar-winning Japanese film that treats death with a quiet, ritualistic tenderness this film only gestures at between jokes. Contemplative, gorgeously shot, and unexpectedly moving.

But There's essentially no comedy here and the pace is deliberately slow; it asks for a patience this film never does.

Departures poster

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