The art of the hangout movie defies the genre. It is a work of immersion and careful study of an ensemble of characters where you get the feeling of familiarity. As if you and the people on the screen are friends, enjoying the journey wherever you go. Not all hangout movies need a plot, the best ones certainly don’t have one outside of their relationships. The conflict is not the driving force, but rather the knowledge of each other on an intimate level.
Quentin Tarantino has a lot of movies that mimic the hangout vibe as he credits Rio Bravo as the first hangout movie. Though they’ve been around for a while, directors like Jim Jarmusch and Richard Linklater have recently devoted much of their filmography to perfecting the art of the hangout. The directors almost make their cameras disappear as they lead their audience into aimlessness. These are the best hangout movies, ranked.
10 Everyone wants something!!
In the style of his ’90s cult classic Dazed and confused, indie author Richard Linklater gives us another masterclass in the act of the hangout. With a long line of guys who are just guys, hanging out playing baseball, hoping to make the team at a local Texas college Everyone wants something!! gets to the heart of the brotherly bond that makes a team great and why it’s crucial to have fun. Linklater has his cast of young actors work the diamond. Everyone from Glenn Powell to Blake Jenner knows how to play America’s pastime.
9 Ocean 12
While it’s still ultimately about a robbery at the end of the movie, Ocean 12 feels like a radical departure from the original reboot. Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and the boys, instead of a hard-hitting, tightly wound heist movie about getting the gang together, remain slumped back, unattached to anything but the pristine vibe of cool European cities. The film has a stoner, hazy quality to its beautiful photography, as the crew find comfort in their friendship. They sit back, look beautiful and have a great time as they become entangled with a French master thief (Vincent Cassell). Steven Soderbergh proved once again that he is one of the brightest and most transgressive filmmakers working in the studio system.
8 Friday
Ice Cube’s stone classic Friday enjoys his characters’ lack of ambition and gives in to their ability to get high to comedic effect. Two friends – Craig (Ice Cube) and Smokey (the hilarious Chris Tucker) – smoke weed from their porch all day. The film hilariously depicts black neighborhoods on the west coast of the 1990s. Even if the jokes are exaggerated, the heart of the hood remains. Although the comedy is sidelined towards the end due to its social posts, Friday gives us deebo and Smokey, two characters who will remain comedy icons while Ice Cube created a franchise.
7 Night on Earth
Jim Jarmusch was part of a renaissance of independent filmmakers that emerged from NYU art school. His films had a unique blend of comedy, zen realism and aimlessness with a cast of cool characters who immediately left his blueprint as an indelible slice of American cinema. Night on Earth is a series of vignettes that focus on the relationship between taxi driver and passenger. How that one short ride can be as intimate, epic and tragic as any relationship you have, but in such a short time. Conversations range from the coolness of Winona Ryder smoking a cigarette in the West Coast Hills to the manic energy of Giancarlo Esposotio on the streets of New York. Jarmusch’s film and filmography are essential to understanding the hangout movie.
6 clerks
If there’s one independent movie success story from the 90s to tell, Kevin Smith should be at the top of that list. With no backing from a major studio – Smith used some of his credit cards to fund his script and shot the film in black and white, with none other than his friends – clerks somehow found its audience. A cult hit with a non-story that goes from one slack conversation to another, fueled by weed smoke and cigarettes, the film laid the blueprint for conversational comedy in independent cinema. Kevin Smith also gave birth to two iconic characters in Jay and Silent Bob, building his cinematic universe before Marvel ever did.
5 breakfast club
John Hughes created high school archetypes that would set the blueprint for so many high school movies that came after. Taking the jock, freak, nerd, burnout and it girl into a room for a day in detention became a classic. As the group hangs out, getting to know each other in a large school library and slowly dismantling each other, their expectations and the audience, The breakfast club is full of great character moments. Even when they are at odds, the great diffuser becomes weed and creates the 5 bonds that you think will last long after the credits come out.
4 Lost in translation
The existential milieu and isolation of being in a country whose language you don’t speak becomes an acutely studied character portrait in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in translation. Stuck between the stage of fame and fading, Bill Murray shines as he moves from press events to the karaoke bars, longing for a human connection. When he eventually finds love in an equally lonely Scarlett Johansson, who finds himself sidelined and ignored by her distant boyfriend (Giovanni Ribisi). The film glides through a series of hangouts as the two begin to connect and find love in those quiet moments together. The loose and apparently unconstructed nature gives Lost in translation all his strength.
3 Once upon a time in Hollywood
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Quentin Tarantino’s films have long been imbued with hang-out, character-driven sensibilities. Tarantino appreciates learning the ins and outs of what the characters like to think or talk about as the plot recedes. Once upon a time in Hollywood leaned on this more than most of his films. Tarantino puts frontseta in the cars of friends Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) as they freewheel through Los Angeles. The two drink beer, margaritas and rip cigarettes as they hang out watching Rick on TV. While he also changes history, as Tarantino likes to do.
2 Dazed and confused
Linklater’s best films can be seen as a thesis statement on how to use film to make the slow passage of time seem tangible and concrete. With comedic effect, Linklater perfected the art of the hangout movie by suspending time to its hazy level. Dazed and confused is a perfect hangout movie because of that slow, tactile quality where you’re part of the ensemble and the characters feel like your friends. Featuring the now iconic Matthew McConaughey read line, Dazed and confused will live forever.
1 The Big Lebowski
The depth of the Coen Brothers’ films across genres pays tribute to their long line of reference material and subtext metaphors. The Big Lebowski, on the face of it, is a stoner comedy about the laid-back life of “The Dude”, caught in the crosshairs of a kidnapping plan. But the cult status of The Big Lebowski suggests more. As well as philosophical jokes about how to live life, a noir mystery and also a commentary on America’s involvement in the Middle East. More than just a comedy of endlessly quoted dialogue, Lebowski has the legs of one of their finest works. However, it is The Dude’s tao that equates to an all-round meeting place.