The Most Uplifting Movies and TV Shows Worth Watching
Some days you just need something that leaves you feeling better than when you sat down. Not everything has to be heavy or challenging or make you question existence.
Sometimes the best thing a film or show can do is remind you that people are resilient, funny, and capable of surprising kindness — and then send you back to your own life with a little more energy than you had before. Here are some of the best options when that’s exactly what you’re looking for.
Ted Lasso
Few shows have earned their reputation the way Ted Lasso has. It follows an American football coach hired to manage a British soccer team — despite knowing almost nothing about the sport.
What sounds like a setup for mockery turns into something much warmer. Ted’s stubborn belief in people, even the ones who are actively working against him, becomes the show’s engine.
It never feels naive. The show earns its optimism by putting its characters through real difficulties first.
The first two seasons especially are hard to beat.
The Pursuit of Happyness
Based on a true story, this film follows a man raising his young son alone while sleeping in shelters and fighting for a competitive internship with no guarantee of a job in the end. Will Smith gives one of his best performances here, and the relationship between father and son feels genuinely real.
By the time the final scene arrives, you’ll have worked for it emotionally — which makes the payoff hit harder than most feel-good films manage.
Schitt’s Creek
The Rose family loses everything and gets relocated to a tiny town they once bought as a joke. What starts as a fish-out-of-water comedy gradually becomes something more touching.
The characters grow in ways that feel earned rather than forced. David and Patrick’s relationship is one of the warmest in recent television.
And Dan Levy’s writing consistently finds humor without punching down at anyone. Give it until the end of Season 2 before deciding if it’s for you.
Paddington 2
The first Paddington film is charming. The second one is, by many accounts, one of the best films of the decade — regardless of genre.
It’s funny, inventive, and genuinely moving without ever being saccharine. Paddington’s core belief that everyone deserves to be treated with kindness gets tested by the plot, but the film never loses faith in it.
Hugh Grant plays the villain and clearly had the time of his life doing it.
Soul
Pixar has made a lot of films about big emotions, but Soul goes somewhere different. It asks what makes a life worth living — not through grand gestures, but through quiet, ordinary moments.
The main character spends most of the film convinced he’s missed his true purpose, and the film gently challenges that idea. The jazz sequences are stunning, the voice cast is excellent, and the ending lands with a lightness that most films about life and meaning never quite reach.
Abbott Elementary
A workplace mockumentary set in an underfunded Philadelphia public school, Abbott Elementary follows a group of teachers who genuinely care about their students in a system that makes that care very difficult. The humor is sharp, the characters are distinct, and the show has a warmth that feels earned rather than manufactured.
Quinta Brunson created something rare: a comedy that treats its characters’ idealism seriously.
Billy Elliot
A boy in a small English mining town discovers he wants to be a ballet dancer. His working-class father and brother struggle to understand it.
The film doesn’t soften the conflict or offer easy resolutions, but it’s deeply uplifting in the way it portrays what happens when someone gets to become who they actually are. The final scene is one of the best in British cinema.
Amélie
This French film follows a shy Parisian woman who decides to secretly improve the lives of the people around her. It’s visually inventive and playful, with a sense of wonder that never tips into saccharine.
Audrey Tautou’s performance is perfectly calibrated — curious and gentle without being precious. The film makes Paris look like a place where small acts of attention can change someone’s whole day.
Wild
Reese Witherspoon hikes over a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone after her life falls apart. The film doesn’t pretend the trail fixes everything, and it’s honest about the grief and mistakes that drove her there in the first place.
But there’s something deeply moving about watching someone decide to keep walking when stopping would be so much easier. It’s less about reaching the end and more about what happens in the space between steps.
Reservation Dogs
Set on a reservation in rural Oklahoma, this FX series follows four teenagers trying to get enough money to leave for California. It’s funny in ways that feel specific and true, and it’s made almost entirely by Indigenous writers, directors, and cast members.
The humor is dry and the grief underneath it is real. By the second season, it becomes one of the most affecting shows on television — the kind that stays with you because it treats its characters with full respect.
Julie & Julia
A different life unfolds at the same time as another, one in postwar Paris where Julia Child finds herself tangled up in French recipes, the other set decades later when someone in New York follows those same pages line by line. Meryl Streep plays Child with a kind of clumsy glow – alive, loud, utterly charmed by meals and marriage both.
Instead of rushing forward, the movie lingers, focuses on small rooms, quiet kitchens, routines that build slowly. Yet within that slowness sits something bold – not grand heroics, just effort that matters because it feels real.
Encanto
Midway through the hills of Colombia sits a village humming with magic, home to the Madrigals. Every kid there gets a unique power handed down like an heirloom – everyone but Mirabel, who stands at the center of the story.
What unfolds digs into how families assign roles, how silence can weigh heavy, how those smiling brightest might be holding their breath. Music weaves through scenes with real heart, colors burst without apology, meaning slips in quiet because no evil figure needs to show up for truth to sting.
This movie lingers longer than most Disney tales lately, built on cracks instead of crowns.
Mrs. Doubtfire
A timeless favorite, though not without its quirks. A man just out of marriage finds a strange way back into his kids’ lives – by pretending to be an elderly woman from Scotland.
Humor still lands well today. What truly sticks, however, is how deeply he leans into warmth amid the chaos.
Those closing moments refuse clean endings. In fact, they feel truer than nearly any other movie meant for families ever dares.
Paddington (The First One)
What stands out is how it carves its own path apart from what follows. A story unfolds where a bear searches for somewhere he can belong, one that holds weight since the journey isn’t treated lightly.
Quietly, almost without notice, the Browns begin letting him in, moment by moment – much like any person who once waited, unsure, on someone else’s doorstep. How belonging begins with a single unlocked door.
When The Credits Roll
A film might come back into view when days grow heavy. Not because it hides the rough edges of life – far from it.
Instead, these scenes show folks moving through trouble without losing quiet kindness. A laugh arrives mid-struggle.
Someone reaches out across silence. You see how small warmth spreads even where pain sits at the table.
That kind of moment, caught on camera, can shift something inside you. Heavy stays heavy – but maybe not quite as solid.
What makes these movies and series stand out is how clearly they show real life. Not a single one wastes your attention, since each refuses to look away from hard truths – yet somehow leaves you feeling lighter.
More from Go2Tutors!
- The Romanov Crown Jewels and Their Tragic Fate
- 13 Historical Mysteries That Science Still Can’t Solve
- Famous Hoaxes That Fooled the World for Years
- 15 Child Stars with Tragic Adult Lives
- 16 Famous Jewelry Pieces in History
Like Go2Tutors’s content? Follow us on MSN.
