Movies that make you feel happy

Hoosiers. Hoosiers does it for me every time.

And, on the cornier side, Cool Runnings.

There are hundreds of such films for me. A few, just off the top of my head:

Scrooged
Planes, Trains & Automobiles
The Long, Long Trailer
Father of the Bride
Hopscotch
The Gold Rush (1925)
In the Good Old Summertime
To Have & Have Not
Hello, Dolly!
How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
Charade
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Animal House
National Lampoon's Vacation
From Russia With Love
North by Northwest
A Hard Day's Night
Adam's Rib
When Harry Met Sally
You've Got Mail
The African Queen
The Parent Trap
The Sound of Music
Dumbo
Toy Story
Pillow Talk
Casablanca
Stalag 17
The Ghost & Mrs. Muir
The Burbs
Road to Utopia
Grease
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
The Thin Man
Murder By Death
Galaxy Quest
Back to the Future
Star Wars
Operation Petticoat
Father Goose
Houseboat
Grumpy Old Men

ah hell, way too many to list...

JACK
The Replacements

Off the top of my head....

The Natural, God, The Devil, Angels, and oh yeah, Baseball!
The Shawshank Redemption, The last scenes.
Rounders, "He beat me straight up!"
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, fun all around!
Contact
Immortal Beloved
A.I. Artificial Intelligence, "I Love You"
Forrest Gump, The feather!
Young Frankenstein
The Legend of Bagger Vance
The Tigger Movie, Kenny Loggins' song does it to me everytime....
Big Trouble in Little China, How can you NOT be happy?
Gattaca, The space launch
The Princess Bride, "As you wish."
Finding Nemo
Seabiscuit
Monsters, Inc., That last scene...
8^B

Amelie
Slap Shot
Major League
Office Space
Dazed and Confused
Good Will Hunting
Talk to Her - In a very European way
The Insider - Maybe makes me feel more inspired than happy
Animal House
Go
Swingers
Three Kings
Dead Poets Society
About a Boy
High Fidelity
Say Anything
Almost Famous
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
ET
Waking Ned Devine
The Full Monty
Billy Elliot
Rushmore
Royal Tenenbaums
Wonder Boys
Il Postino
Jerry Maguire
Field of Dreams

What about Bob?

Hackers - This movie actually changed my life. In '84, after 2 kick ass years studying computers in high school (trs-80 and apple II) I entered the CS major at UCF. Bad mistake; Business types teaching (one teacher, for programming 2, teaching us pascal while concurrently learning pascal at night school), complete disorganization, total lack of creativity and fun. Frustration, annoyance, no connection, no sense of direction, dropped the major.
Years later, see Hackers, rediscover high school level love of computing; how kick ass it could be. (plus, a cyberpunk Angelina Jolie...) And, for a aspiring Techno enthusiast, insert kick ass soundtrack (Prodigy, Orbital, Leftfield, etc.). The opening song, Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

Great flick.

The Secret of My Success - never fails to be an inspiration, and a great cheer-up movie. Michael J. Fox at his best.

Back to the Future series = awesome. Just awesome.

American Pie (I, II, and hopefully after tomorrow, III) - 1 never fails to choke me up. I think this is a great coming of age film. 2 we liked as well (damn the critics, full speed ahead!) because it's like a great book, when you're done, you wish there were more chapters. Well, there's more!

Serial (Martin Mull, Tuesday Weld] - Ah, Mr. Everyman (Mull) tries to deal with the rise of new age foolishness and the swinging 70's in Marin County. I can't wait for this to hit DVD. VHS quasi-in-print.

B.A.P.S. - Underrated film. Halle Berry, Martin Landau. Great feel good movie, funny with a good heart.

A Night at the Roxbury - ok, cheesy, but in the late 80's, my friend and I considered ourselves to be sua-ve clubbers in Orlando. We were more like the Wutabis than actually cool, so it's fun to watch this and laugh at myself.


I second Animal House, Cool Runnings, and I'll try to remember more. My wife adds:


Tootsie - Great film

(insert name of John Hughes film here) - Yes.

Bottle Rocket
Rushmore
The Royal Tenenbaums
Punch-Drunk Love
LOTR: FOTR
A Christmas Story
About Schmidt
Amelie

Rudy
Searching for Bobby Fischer
Hoosiers
Dominick & Eugene
The Rookie (2002)
Apollo 13
The Waterboy
Office Space
Billy Madison
Happy Gilmore
The Sandlot
Lucas
Up the Creek
Con Air
Waking Ned Devine
The Italian Job (2003)
Spirited Away
Mr. Holland's Opus
A Christmas Story
Smoke Signals
My Bodyguard

It's a Wonderful Life
Willy Wonka
The Sound of Music

And they're not movies, but:

Charlie Brown Christmas
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Rankin/Bass Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Oh, God, there must be others. Hmm...

The Truman Show!
The Truman Show!
The Truman Show!

When the hell is this going to be in a special edition dvd?

Singin' In The Rain
Help!
A Hard Day's Night
City Lights
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Abel Gance's Napoleon
Fantasia

I'll throw out one that I doubt no one will mention: Walkabout

Absolutely. Each film I listed deals with life or the nature of existance and I find the messages to be quite positive. Besides, I am Worth.

I wrote a short explanation using all the films(except Fight Club) here.

It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Some more that haven't been mentioned

A Beautiful Mind
Evelyn
Finding Forrester
Forrest Gump
Mighty Ducks
Minority Report (if you buy into the literal interpretation as I do)
Miracle on 34th Street
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Shrek
Wizard of Oz

The Big Lebowski. Always leaves a big smile on my face when it's over.

def. The Big Lebowski
Rushmore
Bottle Rocket
Swingers
Made
Punch Drunk Love
The King of Comedy
Pulp Fiction
Mallrats
Friday
Office Space

raising arizona, hudsucker proxy, as good as it gets, pee wee's big adventure, ferris bueller's day off...and even though it's been mentioned already-you can't leave out amelie-come on!

Hook

Xanadu

Wonderland by Michael Winterbottom.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

The ending to Buffalo 66 always makes me happy.

The Shawshank Redemption
The Green Mile