Curator Watchlist
A glossy, old-school tearjerker about female friendship, ambition, class difference, and the way life pulls people apart and back together. It’s melodramatic by design, but the performances and emotional payoff make it a strong watch if you’re in the mood for a big, sincere cry.
Where to watch: Buy
Wed · 2h 3m
Director: Garry Marshall
Starring: Bette Midler, Barbara Hershey, John Heard
A privileged rich debutante and a cynical struggling entertainer share a turbulent, but strong childhood friendship over the years.
Garry Marshall
Bette Midler, Barbara Hershey, John Heard
A glossy, old-school tearjerker about female friendship, ambition, class difference, and the way life pulls people apart and back together. It’s melodramatic by design, but the performances and emotional payoff make it a strong watch if you’re in the mood for a big, sincere cry.
Beaches is unabashedly built to make you feel everything, and it mostly earns that ambition. The film leans into the rhythms of a long friendship: childhood bonding, adult distance, resentment, loyalty, and the kind of love that survives bad timing and bad decisions. It’s a very specific kind of studio-era emotional storytelling, polished, accessible, and not remotely shy about the tears it wants from you.
What gives it staying power is the central relationship. The movie understands how female friendship can be both deeply intimate and maddeningly complicated, especially when class, career, and life choices keep shifting the balance. It’s broad, sometimes corny, and occasionally overstates its hand, but the sincerity is hard to resist.
If you like your dramas with big music cues, big feelings, and a final stretch that aims straight for the heart, this delivers. If you need irony or distance, it will probably feel like too much. But for viewers open to a classic melodrama, it’s a durable and genuinely affecting crowd-pleaser.
ginger● (3.5★) · 962 likes
they should have been lesbians
Wood (2★) · 841 likes
Movies your mom likes cinematic universe.
chris (3.5★) · 738 likes
The B in LGBTQ actually stands for Beaches.
sam (4★) · 683 likes
JACKIE: No. I didn’t thank the fucking dirt for sending us a brain-damaged bear. What is even happening right now? What is wrong with all of you? TAISSA: It’s fine, guys. She doesnt’ have to– JACKIE: Oh, shut up, Tai. You were a part of it, too. I mean, are we really not going to talk about this? We just how at the moon and have fucking orgies now? And somehow I’m the one who did something wrong? BEN SCOTT:… more
kenny · 584 likes
I don’t know why my mom loves these emotionally devastating movies😭😭😭
Another warmly acted tearjerker centered on women’s bonds, humor, and grief, with a similar balance of wit and emotional release.
A defining mainstream weepie about family, love, and loss, with the same unapologetic emotional directness.
For viewers drawn to intimate relationships, longing, and the ache of lives shaped by circumstance and missed timing.
Shares the focus on female connection across time, memory, and changing life stages, with a similarly crowd-pleasing emotional sweep.
A powerful, performance-led drama about endurance, female bonds, and survival through hardship.
Offers a heartfelt ensemble story about women, friendship, ambition, and the emotional cost of change.
For the same era’s big-hearted, character-first storytelling and a strong sense of romantic and family feeling.
A multigenerational relationship drama that explores women’s lives, sacrifice, and the ties that persist across distance.
A classic melodrama about transformation, emotional dependency, and the deep pull of human connection.
A sweeping emotional drama about women, class, motherhood, and the pain of lives diverging over time.
For viewers who want an unabashedly romantic, memory-driven tearjerker with a strong emotional payoff.
A reflective, life-spanning portrait of memory and identity, appealing to viewers who like personal storytelling with emotional texture.
female friendship, lifelong bond, class difference, ambition and career, melodrama, illness and mortality, memory and nostalgia, loyalty and estrangement
melodrama, tearjerker, female friendship, class divide, coming-of-age, lifelong bond, sentimental, 1980s drama, illness, nostalgia