Quarter Life Crisis: Movies To Help You Navigate Your 20s
David Young
Feeling lost in your twenties? You're not alone. This list of coming-of-age movies will help you navigate your quarter-life crisis.
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The Script Lab
Being young isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Whether it’s heartbreak, crime, or an uncertain future, many things can affect the outlook in your twenties. But as you probably know already, you’re not alone. Some people feel what you’ve felt, and you can even see your biggest questions and struggles on the big screen—be it from dramas, comedies, romances, or psychological turmoil, there’s always something on this list that can connect with a person’s early adult experiences.

Moonlight (2016)

Screenplay by: Barry Jenkins

Finding yourself is a lifelong journey, but sometimes it helps to see that journey in chapters. The gut-wrenching story of Moonlight by Barry Jenkins does this with Chiron, whose story starts as “Little” (Alex R. Hibbert) and moves on to his twenties as “Black” (Trevante Rhodes), a completely different chapter of his own life.

Throughout the story, questions surrounding manhood, discrimination, and acceptance come in waves, leaving the audience thinking about Chiron’s experience as if they have lived a life of inner struggle and unexpressed thoughts.

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Read More: First Ten Pages: Moonlight (2016)

Frances Ha (2012)

Screenplay by: Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig

Chasing her dreams of being a dancer in her late twenties, Frances (Greta Gerwig) receives the old-school “wake-up call” that every good artist faces: Life gets in the way. Friendships fall apart while others bud into romance, and she witnesses the change up close and personal as her old roommate (Mickey Sumner) experiences all these other milestones without her. Meanwhile, Frances finds herself channeling her passions into different opportunities—all to show audiences that someone can turn “surviving” into “thriving.”

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Read More: A Chronological Timeline of Greta Gerwig’s Writing

Boyz n the Hood (1991)

Screenplay by: John Singleton

When thinking about feeling lost, a good way to combat that is with movies that make you feel seen—that show your lived experience. John Singleton’s debut film Boyz n the Hood did that for countless black Americans of the ’80s and ’90s, especially giving young men a clear reminder of what life might have looked like growing up in the inner city.

With all the good his father (Laurence Fishburne) tries to do, Tre (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) still finds himself moving down a slippery slope that speaks to people for a reason: It might feel all too real.

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Screenplay by: Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, Pierre Bismuth

Love and heartbreak go together like jam and toast. The same is doubly true for young love. Still, if you’re looking for an excuse to cry over that special someone, a good movie is Eternal Sunshine.

In this impressive tale weaving drama, romance, and science fiction, the fantasy of forgetting someone coincides with something more entrancing: the idea of fate and impulse intertwined.

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Read More: 5 Plot Point Breakdown: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Good Will Hunting (1997)

Screenplay by: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck

Will Hunting (Matt Damon) isn’t a person coming from kinder circumstances. As he stumbles through his young adulthood enough to find himself on parole, a self-taught math genius is inadvertently discovered and is offered a chance at a better life.

If ever you feel like a self-saboteur in your twenties, you’ll probably relate to Will, whose choices keep pushing him backward and away from a state of thriving—choices that need resolution if you want to give life a fighting chance.

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The Graduate (1967)

Screenplay by: Buck Henry

Uncertainty is a big problem, and Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) gets spoonful after spoonful when he realizes he has the whole wide world and an intangible future ahead of him. Soon, he grabs onto something he can feel—a married woman (Anne Bancroft) whose advances are palpable and whose vindictiveness is sure and swift.

After realizing he doesn’t want to continue his tryst, Benjamin starts seeing real consequences to all his actions, and he has to brave uncertainty yet again to get to the future he wants.

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Dazed and Confused (1993)

Screenplay by: Richard Linklater

Yet another coming-of-age comedy, Dazed and Confused is Richard Linklater’s answer to the question, “What did growing up feel like?” This film demonstrates exactly how strange things can get for people entering a new stage of life. Just look at the generational clash that came with that between the film’s freshmen and the high-schoolers who “welcomed” them.

Free-flowing and full of vignette-like moments, this story is a nostalgia-filled favorite for young adults of any decade, reminding audiences not of the period but of that stage in their lives.

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Almost Famous (2000)

Screenplay by: Cameron Crowe

William’s (Patrick Fugit) zeal for rock puts him in the right place at the right time to become a teenage writer for Rolling Stone as he accompanies an up-and-coming band, Stillwater.

It’s an astonishing look at how music fandom has become an irrevocable part of identity as we grow to form our own thoughts, opinions, and feelings about the world around us as budding adults.

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The Squid and the Whale (2005)

Screenplay by: Noah Baumbach

Everyone has to learn their parents aren’t perfect as they grow older, and this seems to be the case for Walt and Frank (Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline) when they learn of their parents’ impending divorce.

After watching their mom (Laura Linney) and dad (Jeff Daniels) fall from grace time and again during their separation, the two boys take sides and start seeing things from a limited perspective, affecting their growth and happiness until everything comes to a head.

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Garden State (2004)

Screenplay by: Zach Braff

Living in the present is of the utmost importance. Letting anything else define who you are can leave you drowning in blame, failure, or mountains of medication, like Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff).

When facing a shifting reality where the weights of his years-long medication and guilt finally lift a bit after returning home for his mother’s funeral and meeting Sam (Natalie Portman), he embraces things differently in this authentically imperfect story of “boy meets girl.”

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Read More: 6 Examples of the Classic Manic Pixie Dream Girl

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Whether it’s a feel-good movie about finding yourself or a cinematic warning sign, the scripts here can help you when you’re feeling your quarter-life crisis. Directionless, trapped, or just plain depressed, you’ll be moved by seeing how the people in these movies deal with the same stuff—making them worth watching or reading as much as you need to.