Top Ten Best Divorce Movies 

That painful divorce got you down?  Grab your buds and pop in a DVD that’ll make you laugh and cry.  Because sometimes the big screen can speak to your emotions better than you can.  Here are my Top 10 Best Divorce movies.

10.  Kramer Vs. Kramer

                Nothing says love like devoted father Dustin Hoffman, going through a nasty custody battle with Meryl Streep.  This may not make you chuckle, but it will give you a good cry, and sometimes tears can be therapeutic.

9.   The First Wives Club

                I freakin’ LOVE this movie.  Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and Bette Midler have all lost their idiot husbands to younger, perkier women.  So they decide not to get mad, but get even.  I heard they were supposed to turn this movie into a TV drama but I don’t think it ever went anywhere.

8.  Waiting To Exhale

                One of my favorite movies EVER!  Whitney Houston, Loretta Devine, Angela Bassett, and Lela Rochon play four best friends all struggling with their own divorce problems.  My favorite part in this whole movie is when Gregory Hines says to Loretta Devine’s character, Gloria, “I like a woman with a little meat on her bones.”  Love it!  And it has an awesome, albeit depressing, soundtrack. 

7.  Mrs. Doubtfire

                There is no devotion like Robin Williams dressing up in drag just so he can see his kids.  If you can watch this movie from beginning to end and not shed a tear then you’re made of stone.  My favorite scene is when they finally figure it out, and his wife realizes that he’s truly a good man.  In real life she’d probably get a restraining order, but that’s why we have movies.

6.  Liar Liar

                I love movies where there is a cute kid.  Jim Carrey and Maura Tierney play divorced couple Fletcher and Audrey Reede.  Fletcher is a typical self-serving lawyer who has been neglecting his son, Max.  Max makes a wish on his birthday candles that – for one day – his father could not tell a lie.  The wish comes true and antics ensue.  I love Cary Elwes as the dorky, uncool new boyfriend.  I love it.  And at the end, when the credits run, they show all the outtakes and it’s just a riot.

5.  Jerry Maguire

                Show me the money!  No seriously, can I have some money?  I love this movie because I love that little boy who plays Renèe Zellweger’s son.  Jonathan Lipnicki is just THE cutest kid who ever lived.  Renèe Zellweger is a divorced, single mom who is the only person to follow Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) out of his job as a sports agent after he recommends the company focus less on money and more on people.  I love Renèe Zellweger’s divorced woman’s club, and Bonnie Hunt as the bitter sister.  This is truly a great movie.  It had me at hello.

4.  Stepmom

                This one is a tearjerker, I won’t lie. But it’s very sweet, without being overly sentimental.  Susan Sarandon plays Jackie, a loving mother who doesn’t want Isabel (Julia Roberts), the new woman in her ex-husband’s life, to raise her children.  The family seems like it could fall apart at the seams until something happens to make them all realize that sometimes “family” can be found in odd places.

3.  War of the Roses

                This movie is like that Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston movie, The Break-Up, only good.  Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner play Oliver and and Barbara Rose (get it, War of the Roses?  I think that’s so clever).  After 17 years of marriage the couple can no longer find common ground and must split, but their house means the world to both of them, so, in the words of Daffy Duck, “This means war.”

2.  Along Came Polly

                I don’t usually like Ben Stiller, or Jennifer Aniston for that matter, but I love this movie.  I really think Ben Stiller is Reuben Feffer, and Jennifer Aniston is Polly Prince.  Reuben Feffer is a risk assessment guy, and after marrying the woman of his dreams (Debra Messing) the two go on a blissful honeymoon, only to have his wife of a few days cheat on him with her foreign scuba instructor (played perfectly by Hank Azaria).  Now on his own, a sad and dejected Reuben runs into an old classmate named Polly.  She’s spontaneous and quirky, while he’s a safe bet.  Right when Reuben thinks he may finally be able to bounce back from his awful wedding, his cheating wife calls and says she wants to make it work.  What’s a guy to do?  Excellent cast, including a hilarious Alec Baldwin as Reuben’s boss, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Sandy, Reuben’s child-star buddy.

1.  Life as a House

                I felt that this movie, one of my all-time favorites, went thoroughly unnoticed.  I also wouldn’t advise Googling it, as the plot summaries are all wrong.  It says on every website that it’s about a man who’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer, who tries to reconnect with his estranged son, but that’s really not the point.  Kevin Kline plays a divorced architect who gets fired from job desigining models.  He does find out he has cancer but keeps it from his family.  His ex-wife, believably played by Kristin Scott Thomas, as well as the family (and pretty much, the neighborhood) all come together to help him rebuild a house he’d inherited.  The major point of the movie is that he doesn’t tell his family what’s wrong with him.  I found the movie really beautiful, and there’s this one scene in the movie where this song plays in the background; I think it’s Both Sides Now, by Joni Mitchell.  I love movies like this, movies where it takes some tragedy to make people realize that they shouldn’t sweat the small stuff.

C’mon guys, I know I left out A LOT.  Where’re your lists?