The 8 Most Fun Musical Movies of All Time, Ranked

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The cast of Mamma Mia posing for the film's poster

Published Sep 9, 2026, 8:17 PM EDT

Marcel is a writer who is passionate about most movies and series. He will watch anything that's good. He is a content manager by day and a videographer when needed. Marcel used to work at a major streaming service based in Asia Pacific as a Content Specialist and was the Distribution Manager for a local movie distribution company.

Musical is one of Hollywood's oldest genres. For a musical to be truly fun, it needs to do more than simply have good songs. The best ones create a sense of freedom where characters can suddenly burst into song and dance through the streets. Whether they are romantic, funny, or completely over-the-top, the best musicals understand that they have to immerse the audience in their world. They invite us to enjoy the music and start moving, but also to get swept up in the emotions.

Here, we put together musicals that bring the most entertaining time. From classic musicals from the 1960s to contemporary 2020s film, these movies are not afraid to go for broke and deliver a jolly good time. They remind us that sometimes the best musical is simply the one that leaves you smiling, humming the soundtrack, and wanting to watch it all over again.

8 'Om Shanti Om' (2007)

Om Shanti Om first begins in the 1970s, following Om Prakash Makhija (Shah Rukh Khan), a junior film artist who is killed when he tries to protect the famous leading actress Shanti (Deepika Padukone) from a studio fire that took her life. Om is then reincarnated decades later as a successful Bollywood star. With memories of his past life, he seeks to expose that Shanti's death was not an accident and confront the killer.

If Hollywood tentpoles tend to have massive action set pieces in them, Bollywood ultra-big productions have elaborate musical numbers and over-the-top, dramatic storytelling. Om Shanti Om has all that, while also paying homage to the country's long cinema history. The film keeps on escalating, even after the shift in the second half, where the film focuses on Om's new self. The musical numbers are electrifying and intricate, and they're inseparable from the plot. Even the final confrontation with the villain is through a song. Shah Rukh Khan's performance as both the earnest struggling actor and the ridiculous superstar gives the film an enormous amount of comedic energy, while Deepika Padukone's feature film debut catapults her into superstardom. If you're new to Indian cinema, this is the perfect gateway to start.

7 'Funny Girl' (1968)

Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice smiling in a bright yellow dress while surrounded by men in Funny Girl.

Funny Girl follows Fanny Brice (Barbra Streisand), a talented young woman from New York who dreams of becoming a performer despite not looking like a typical stage star. Her determination eventually gets her noticed, and she moves from small-time performer to major Broadway celebrity, becoming one of the stars of the Ziegfeld Follies. As she rises, she has to balance her professional success with her personal life.

The obvious reason Funny Girl is so much fun is Barbra Streisand, who originated the role on stage. Her comic timing, singing voice, and charisma are perfect for this film. Songs such as "Don't Rain on My Parade" and "I'm the Greatest Star" are huge musical showcases, but they are further elevated by Streisand's personality. The Ziegfeld Follies sequences also give the movie the old-fashioned glamour of classic Broadway. Directed by William Wyler, who did Ben-Hur and Roman Holiday, the film is a major success, with eight Oscar nominations and one win for Streisand.

6 'In the Heights' (2021)

Anthony Ramos and Melissa Barrera dancing with a crowd around them in In the Heights.

Set in Washington Heights, In the Heights centers on Usnavi (Anthony Ramos), a young bodega owner who dreams of returning to the Dominican Republic, while his friend Benny (Corey Hawkins) hopes to build a life with Usnavi's cousin Nina (Leslie Grace). Usnavi is enamored with Vanessa (Melissa Barrera) who dreams of becoming a fashion designer. As a heat wave hits the neighborhood and the possibility of winning a lottery ticket emerges, the characters have to confront what they actually want from their futures.

Adapted from the Broadway show written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the film successfully transports the energy of the play to the film. Right from the very beginning, it grabs you with energetic songs and choreography, as well as its characters. Director Jon M. Chu turns rooftops, streets, swimming pools, subway stations, and even walls to create musical numbers that feel magical. The Latin and hip-hop influences also give the soundtrack a much more contemporary energy than many traditional Hollywood musicals. Hamilton alum Anthony Ramos brings charisma and warmth to Usnavi, while the rest of the ensemble that makes the Heights feel like a genuine community. It's definitely one of the best musical films released in recent memory.

5 'La La Land' (2016)

Emma Stone as Mia and Ryan Gosling as Sebastian dancing in the observatory in 'La La Land' (2016).

La La Land follows Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress trying to reach her dreams, and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a passionate jazz pianist who dreams of opening his own club. They meet and eventually fall in love and begin supporting each other’s ambitions. As Mia's acting career develops and Sebastian gets opportunities to pursue his musical dreams, however, their relationship becomes complicated by their different paths.

La La Land is so fun because of how it turns ordinary, familiar life into giant musical numbers. The opening highway sequence immediately establishes the film's joyful sense of movement. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone also make the movie enjoyable because their chemistry has been battle-tested through numerous other movies, so it just feels cozy to see them on screen. At the same time, the film's homage to old Hollywood musicals gives it a wonderfully romantic visual style while still creating its own language. The film's extended musical number at the end is a lovely and heartbreaking sequence that is true to the film's theme of chasing our dreams. With its 10th anniversary this year, there is no better time to revisit this film.

Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

FIND YOUR FILM →

What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind.

ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.

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Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours?

AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.

NEXT QUESTION →

How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.

AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.

NEXT QUESTION →

What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?

AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?

AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.

NEXT QUESTION →

Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible.

AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.

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What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.

AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.

NEXT QUESTION →

What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.

ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.

NEXT QUESTION →

How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.

AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?

AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.

REVEAL MY FILM →

The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

Parasite

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about.

Oppenheimer

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

Birdman

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

No Country for Old Men

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

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4 'The Young Girls of Rochefort' (1967)

Françoise Dorléac and Catherine Deneuve sitting side by side and singing in Young Girls of Rochefort.

The Young Girls of Rochefort follows twin sisters Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) and Solange (Françoise Dorléac), two talented young women living in the seaside town of Rochefort who are both dreaming of leaving for Paris and finding love. Delphine is a dancer and Solange is a musician, and they are hired as carnival singers. There, they find colorful characters in town, and also what they're looking for.

Jacques Demy made several legendary musicals in his career, and The Young Girls of Rochefort is one of them. Demy's colorful and bright style turns Rochefort into a magical place, filled with pastel buildings and brightly colored costumes. The catchy songs paired with elaborate choreography make the film a grand time to watch. Added with Michel Legrand's score gives the whole film an infectious sense of movement. Deneuve and Dorléac are particularly charming as the sisters, and the combination of French musical romance with a distinctly Hollywood-inspired style makes the film feel both familiar and unusual. This masterpiece of a musical is often overlooked because of Demy's other masterpiece, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but it is still a 10/10 film.

3 'Singin' in the Rain' (1952)

Singin' in the Rain follows silent-film star Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly), his best friend Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor), and aspiring actress Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) as Hollywood makes the transition from silent movies to talking pictures. Don's latest film becomes a disaster when audiences discover that his co-star has an unbearable voice. With the studio desperate to save its expensive production, Don, Cosmo, and Kathy come up with the idea of transforming the film into a musical.

Singin' in the Rain remains one of the easiest musicals to simply have a great time watching. The movie is packed with extraordinary dance sequences, genuinely funny comedy, infectious songs, and a level of physical performance that makes almost every scene entertaining. Gene Kelly's famous rain dance is obviously the centerpiece, but the film has several other spectacular moments. Kelly, O'Connor, and Reynolds have an easy chemistry makes the film effortlessly fun. Its story that chronicles Hollywood's transition to talkies makes it a must-see for cinephiles as well.

2 'Mamma Mia!' (2008)

Christine Baranski, Meryl Streep and Julie Walters singing and dancing in Mamma Mia!

Mamma Mia! follows Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) who is preparing to marry her fiancé and she wants her father to walk her down the aisle. However, she has never met her father and has discovered that three different men could potentially be him. Without telling her mother Donna (Meryl Streep), Sophie invites all three men to the wedding, setting off a chaotic reunion between her mom and the three men.

With the story constructed around the immensely catchy ABBA songbook, Mamma Mia! is simply a joy to watch. From its beautiful Greek setting, comedic moments and colorful ensemble cast, the film invites the audience to sing along. Led by the energetic Amanda Seyfried and Meryl Streep, hit songs like Dancing Queen and Super Trouper become huge communal experiences. The commitment from all the cast, including Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgård, only triples the fun. It's silly and absurd but it is never boring. This enjoyable musical is followed by an equally beloved sequel, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again.

1 'The Sound of Music' (1965)

Maria plays guitar and sings surrounded by children in a meadow in The Sound of Music.

The Sound of Music follows Maria (Julie Andrews), a spirited young woman who leaves the convent to become the governess of the seven children of Captain Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer). The captain's strict nature makes it difficult for Maria, but still, she brings music and playfulness back into the household, especially for the children.

The Sound of Music is one of the most important and iconic musicals in Hollywood. The songs are instantly memorable, but more importantly, they are woven into the plot in ways that make the film feel constantly energetic and alive. "Do-Re-Mi" turns a musical lesson into a playful family excursion and "My Favorite Things" transforms anxiety into comfort. They are timeless songs that can also function outside of the musical. Julie Andrews gives Maria an infectious warmth makes the movie thoroughly engaging for audiences of all ages. Even with its darker historical material, the film remains remarkably cheerful, colorful, romantic, and funny. It is the gold standard of musicals.