Road Trip Movies to Watch Before You Set Off

A good road trip movie has three ingredients: a vehicle, a reason to leave and passengers who would rather not be stuck together. The best of them are less about the destination than about what happens between the stops. For a starter set, try Little Miss Sunshine for laughs, Thelma & Louise for nerve, The Motorcycle Diaries for scenery and The Straight Story for something gentle.

The list below is sorted by mood and keeps plot details light.

Comedies for the night before

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

A family that agrees on nothing crosses the American south-west in a failing yellow Volkswagen bus to get the youngest to a children's pageant in California. Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, it is funny and unexpectedly kind, and anyone who has push-started a vehicle will feel seen.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)

John Hughes sends Steve Martin's uptight executive home for Thanksgiving in the company of John Candy's relentlessly cheerful salesman. Every form of transport fails in turn. It is the classic film about travel plans falling apart, and a good reminder to pack patience.

National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)

Chevy Chase drives his family across the country to a theme park, determined that everyone will have fun. Directed by Harold Ramis, it is broad and dated in places, but the father who refuses to change the plan remains a recognisable figure.

Dramas with the windows down

Thelma & Louise (1991)

Ridley Scott's film follows two friends, played by Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, whose weekend away turns into a run from the law across the desert. It is tense, funny and angry, with some of the most memorable landscape photography of any road film.

Easy Rider (1969)

Dennis Hopper directed and stars with Peter Fonda as two bikers riding from Los Angeles towards New Orleans, with Jack Nicholson joining along the way. The film is a period piece now, and a bleak one, yet its long riding sequences shaped how road movies have looked ever since.

Paris, Texas (1984)

Wim Wenders opens with Harry Dean Stanton walking out of the desert, silent and lost, and slowly pieces together where he has been. It is slow and spare, best saved for a quiet evening.

Nomadland (2020)

Frances McDormand plays a woman living in her van and following seasonal work around the American West. Chloé Zhao's film, which won the Academy Award for best picture, is honest about both the freedom and the hardship of life on the road.

Based on real journeys

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)

Walter Salles follows the young Ernesto Guevara, played by Gael García Bernal, and his friend Alberto Granado on a long ride through South America in the early 1950s. Whatever you make of the man he became, the film is a fine portrait of how travel changes what a person notices.

The Straight Story (1999)

David Lynch's gentlest film tells the true story of Alvin Straight, an elderly man who drove a ride-on lawn mower from Iowa to Wisconsin to visit his estranged brother. Richard Farnsworth plays him with enormous dignity. Nothing moves faster than walking pace, and that is the pleasure of it.

Green Book (2018)

Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali play a driver and a concert pianist touring the American South in the early 1960s. Peter Farrelly's film won best picture and is an easy watch, though it has been criticised for simplifying its history.

Travel documentaries

• Long Way Round (2004): a television series in which Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman ride motorcycles east from London to New York. Good on breakdowns, borders and morale.
• 180° South (2010): a traveller retraces a famous 1968 journey to Patagonia, by sea and on foot. Beautiful, and thoughtful about what wild places need from visitors.
• Encounters at the End of the World (2007): Werner Herzog visits Antarctica and talks to the people who choose to work there.

Quick guide

If you want	Watch
A film the whole car agrees on	Little Miss Sunshine
Something for a solo evening	Paris, Texas or Nomadland
Scenery above all	The Motorcycle Diaries
Proof that plans go wrong	Planes, Trains and Automobiles
A slow, kind story	The Straight Story

Several of these films carry adult ratings, so check before a family viewing.

Where and how to watch

Catalogues change constantly, so search by title on the licensed services you already use rather than relying on old lists. How films reach the living room has shifted as well, which our piece on television moving onto the home internet line describes, and the campervan and shared-flat households in our article on switching to internet TV show how that works away from a fixed sofa.

For viewing on the journey itself, download titles before leaving. The practical side, from storage to headphones, is in our guide to keeping a film ready for long train and coach rides.

More for the watch list

If your next trip is on foot, our list of hiking movies covers the trails. And if one of these stories has you pricing fuel, the planning advice in our guide to travelling on a small budget applies to four wheels as much as two feet.