Only When I Laugh (1981)

Director
Glenn A. Jordan

Main cast
Marsha Mason; Kristy McNichol; James Coco; Joan Hackett; David Dukes

Genres
Comedy, Drama

Description
A boozy Broadway actress comes out of a 12-week cure to face the problems of her best friends as well as her needy daughter. She tries to balance the terrors of returning to work with the demands of all around her with humor and insight, while staying off the booze.


Similar movies

Arthur is the most quotable drunk millionaire that is likely to ever steal your heart. Dudley Moore portrays Arthur, a thirty year old child who will inherit 750 million dollars if he complies with his family's demands and marries the woman of their choosing.
Nick cannot stop obsessing over his ex-girlfriend, Tris, until Tris' friend Norah suddenly shows interest in him at a club. Thus beings an odd night filled with ups and downs as the two keep running into Tris and her new boyfriend while searching for Norah's drunken friend, Caroline, with help from Nick's band mates. As the night winds down, the two have to figure out what they want from each other.
A single mother in Madrid sees her only son die on his birthday as he runs to seek an actress' autograph. Beside herself with grief, she returns to Barcelona to tell the boy's father about the death of the son he never knew he had.
Antonia knows that it’s her time to die yet before she goes she tells the story of her family in a small Netherlander town. Director Marleen Gorris received the Academy Award for the best foreign film in 1996.
A collection of twentysomethings try to cope with relationships, loneliness, desire and their individual neuroses.
My Wife is an Actress is a French Romantic Comedy/Drama film starring real life couple Yvan Attal and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Attal plays a journalist who becomes obsessively jealous when his actress wife gets a part in a movie with an attractive co-star. Attal also wrote and directed the film.
Georgia Rule follows a rebellious, uncontrollable teenager who is hauled off by her dysfunctional mother to spend the summer with her grandmother. Her journey will lead all three women to revelations of buried family secrets and an understanding that - regardless what happens - the ties that bind can never be broken.
Young-Goon works at manufacturing plant assembling radio’s. She also believes she is a cyborg. One day, while working at the factory, she decides to re-charge herself by slashing her wrist and implanting electrical wires into her arm. Her action gets Young-Goon a mental hospital full of bizarre characters. At New World, Young-Goon spends her time listening to the radio, talking with vending machines, and licking the terminals of 9 volt batteries. She soon encounters a guy named Il-Sun. Il-Sun is a thief of souls in the mental hospital. Young-Goon and Il-Sun soon form a strong bond as their odd personalities complements each other perfectly. Unfortunately, Young-Goon becomes gravely ill from malnutrition. Young-Goon doesn't believe cyborgs should eat human food. She soon loses most of her energy and becomes bedridden. Doctors say that Young-Goon has only a few more days to live if she continues her ways. Il-Sun must now find a way to connect to her soul and save her from imminent death.
An aspiring actress from Australia, Ellie Parker (Naomi Watts), lives a hectic Hollywood lifestyle, perpetually trying to land the role that will elevate her career. Living with her lothario musician boyfriend, Justin (Mark Pelligrino), Ellie is far from happy, finding support primarily from her friend Sam (Rebecca Rigg). When Ellie meets Chris (Scott Coffey) after a minor traffic accident, she sees new potential for both romance and her life in general.
An orphan in a facility run by the mean Miss Hannigan (Carol Burnett), Annie (Aileen Quinn) believes that her parents left her there by mistake. When a rich man named Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks (Albert Finney) decides to let an orphan live at his home to promote his image, Annie is selected. While Annie gets accustomed to living in Warbucks' mansion, she still longs to meet her parents. So Warbucks announces a search for them and a reward, which brings out many frauds.
Iris invites her friend Jack to stay at her family's island getaway after the death of his brother. At their remote cabin, Jack's drunken encounter with Hannah, Iris' sister, kicks off a revealing stretch of days.
High Heels is a murder mystery comedy centering on flamboyant actress Becky del Paramo and her daughter Rebecca, a television anchorwoman. After being estranged for 15 years, Becky re-enters Rebecca's life when she comes to perform a concert. Rebecca, she finds, is now married to one of Becky's ex-lovers, Manuel. The mother and daughter begin making up for lost time, when suddenly, a murder occurs...
Agnès Jaoui co-writes and directs this romantic comedy of manners set in France's rustic Provence. Unpolished and ultra-pragmatic industrialist Jean-Jacques Castella (co-scripter Jean-Pierre Bacri) reluctantly attends Racine's tragedy "Berenice" in order to see his niece play a bit part. He is taken with the play's strangely familiar-looking leading lady Clara Devaux (Anne Alvaro). During the course of the show, Castella soon remembers that he once hired and then promptly fired the actress as an English language tutor. He immediately goes out and signs up for language lessons. Thinking that he is nothing but an ill-tempered philistine with bad taste, Clara rejects him until Castella charms her off her feet.
After getting into a car accident while drunk on the day of her sister's wedding, Gwen Cummings is given a choice between prison or a rehab center. She chooses rehab, but is extremely resistant to taking part in any of the treatment programs they have to offer, refusing to admit that she has an alcohol addiction.
The love story between an actress and a director. Inspired by the life of the late south Indian actress Silk Smitha.
Alex Whitman (Matthew Perry) is a designer from New York City who is sent to Las Vegas to supervise the construction of a nightclub that his firm has been hired to build. Alex is a straight-laced WASP-ish type who, while enjoying a night on the town, meets Isabel Fuentes (Salma Hayek), a free-spirited Mexican-American photographer. Alex and Isabel are overtaken by lust at first sight and end up sp
Charlie Lang is a simple, kindhearted New York City cop. When he realizes he has no money to tip waitress Yvonne Biasi, Lang offers her half the winnings of his lottery ticket. Amazingly, the ticket happens to be a winner, in the sum of $4 million. True to his word, Lang proceeds to share the prize money with Biasi, which infuriates his greedy wife, Muriel. Not content with the arrangement, Muriel begins scheming to take all the money.
Gretta's celebrity boyfriend breaks up with her after a long-term relationship, leaving the singer to find success on her own. With the help of record producer, Dan and hip-hop celebrity, Trouble Gum, Gretta strives to fulfil her musical ambitions.
Mexican immigrant and single mother Flor Moreno finds housekeeping work with Deborah and John Clasky, a well-off couple with two children of their own. When Flor admits she can't handle the schedule because of her daughter, Cristina, Deborah decides they should move into the Clasky home. Cultures clash and tensions run high as Flor and the Claskys struggle to share space while raising their children on their own, and very different, terms.
Elisabeth leaves her abusive and drunken husband Rolf, and goes to live with her brother, Göran. The year is 1975 and Göran lives in a commune called Together. Living in this leftist commune Elisabeth learns that the world can be viewed from different perspectives.
A coming of age story about a shy teenage boy trying to escape from the influence of his domineering mother. His world changes when he begins to work for a retired actress.
Tender romantic comedy about an aspiring musician who arrives in New York in search of fame & fortune. He soon meets a taxi dancer, moves in with her, and before too long a romance develops.
Jose Luis is an executive at his parents underwear factory where his girlfriend Sylvia works on the shop floor. When Sylvia becomes pregnant, Jose Luis promises her that he will marry her, most likely against the wishes of his parents. Jose Luis' mother is determined to break her son's engagement to a girl from a lower-class family, and hires Raul, a potential underwear model and would-be bullfighter to seduce Sylvia.
The true story of Ruth Gordon's early struggles on the road to stage stardom.
Shoko and Mutsuki get married to satisfy their worried parents, but she is well past the age at which a 'good' Japanese woman should marry, and he is in love with a young male college student. The film is less a realistic exploration of gay life than a fairy tale of three young Japanese trying to construct an alternative to the sexual and familial roles given to them by a society turning increasingly emotionally barren.L.
As single mom Grace juggles work, bills, and her affair with a married doctor, her daughter, Ansiedad, plots a shortcut to adulthood after finding inspiration in the coming-of-age stories she's reading for school.
After workaholic Kevin has a drunken one night stand with the beautiful train-wreck Madeline, he's horrified to discover that she's actually his boss' jilted ex-mistress. When she takes a bottle of sleeping pills, Kevin is forced to keep her awake... and over the course of the night the two begin to fall for each other.
A New York writer on sex and love is finally getting married to her Mr. Big. But her three best girlfriends must console her after one of them inadvertently leads Mr. Big to jilt her.
Twins separated at birth, Camryn and Alex meet by chance for the first time on their 21st birthday and discover they're witches with the power to save their homeland of Coventry from the evil that threatens it. But when Camryn leaves Alex to face the darkness alone, will Coventry be doomed? Or will the sisters multiply their magic by standing together?
The life of a divorced television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.
Seven seemingly unconnected fairy tales - glued together only by folklore, mood, color and light - make up this Czech collection of visual poetry. The original piece of literature, written by Karel Jaromír Erben in 1853, contained twelve tales.
A hypocritical swinging college student cat raises hell in a satiric vision of various elements on the 1960's.
Substance-addicted Hollywood actress Suzanne Vale is on the skids. After a spell at a detox centre her film company insists as a condition of continuing to employ her that she live with her mother Doris Mann, herself once a star and now a champion drinker. Such a set-up is bad news for Suzanne who has struggled for years to get out of her mother's shadow, and who finds her mother still treats her like a child. Despite these problems - and further ones to do with the men in in her life - Suzanne can begin to see the funny side of her situation, and it also starts to occur to her that not only do daughters have mothers, mothers do too.
Ten vignettes in New York City: a pickpocket meets his match; a young Hasidic woman, on the eve of her marriage, reveals herself to an Indian businessman; a writer tries a pick-up line; an artist seeks a model; a composer needs to read; two women connect; a man takes a child to Central Park; lovers meet; a couple takes a walk on their anniversary; a kid goes to the prom with a girl in a wheelchair; a retired singer contemplates suicide. There are eight million stories in the naked city: these have been ten of them.
Eva is a divorced soon-to-be empty-nester wondering about her next act. Then she meets Marianne, the embodiment of her perfect self. Armed with a restored outlook on being middle-aged and single, Eva decides to take a chance on her new love interest Albert — a sweet, funny and like-minded man. But things get complicated when Eva discovers that Albert is in fact the dreaded ex–husband of Marianne...
The ups and downs in the lives and careers of a group of ambitious young actresses and show girls from disparate backgrounds brought together in a theatrical hostel. Centres particularly on the conflict and growing friendship between Terry Randall, a rich girl confident in her talent and ability to make it to the top on the stage, and Jean Maitland, a world weary and cynical trouper who has taken the hard knocks of the ruthless and over-populated world of the Broadway apprentice.
A drunken college student invites a dance hostess to the big college dance and then forgets he asked her. When she shows up at school, he tries to get rid of her, but she won't leave. Instead she stays and shows up both him and his classmates snooty dates.
A young wife and mother, bored with day-to-day life in New York City and neglected by her husband, slips into increasingly outrageous fantasies: her mother breaking into the apartment, an explorer's demonstration of tribal fertility music at a party causing strange transformations, and joining terrorists to plant explosives in the Statue of Liberty.
Overachieving actress, Rebecca (Moore), must come to grips with her failing marriage to stay-at-home dad, Tom (Duchovny). While Rebecca's slacker brother, Tobey (Billy Crudup), can't seem to commit to his aspiring-novelist girlfriend, Elaine (Maggie Gyllenhaal). As both relationships spin out of control, the two couples embark on a quest to rediscover the magic and romance of falling in love in New York.
Shortbus revolves around a sexually diverse ensemble of emotionally challenged characters trying desperately to connect in New York City. The characters converge in a weekly Brooklyn artistic/sexual salon loosely inspired by various underground NYC gatherings that took place in the early 2000's. The film includes a variety of explicit scenes containing non-simulated sexual intercourse with visible penetration and male ejaculation.
A fable of emotional liberation and chocolate. A mother and daughter move to a small French town where they open a chocolate shop. The town, religious and morally strict, is against them as they represent free-thinking and indulgence. When a group of Boat Gypsies float down the river the prejudices of the Mayor leads to a crisis.
In New York, a struggling actress and a successful writer sing about their failed marriage from two perspectives.
Call Center Girl is a 2013 Filipino family comedy drama film directed by Don Cuaresma, starring Pokwang, Enchong Dee, and Jessy Mendiola.
A man must struggle to travel home for Thanksgiving, with an obnoxious slob of a shower ring salesman his only companion.
Two actresses fall prey to the supernatural manipulations of a nightclub magician.
A high school outcast who lives in a trailer with his mother finally meets a friend. He wants to ask her if they can go the next step, but then sees her kissing another boy at a party. He runs home only to find his mother having sex with a drunk. He starts yelling, but is countered by the drunk when he suffocates him and makes him look like he hung himself. The scarecrow comes in when the boy's soul is pushed into it. He goes out for revenge.
In a world connected by YouTube, iTunes, and Facebook, Lola and her friends navigate the peer pressures of high school romance and friendship while dodging their sometimes overbearing and confused parents. When Lola's mom, Anne, "accidentally" reads her teenage daughter's racy journal, she realizes just how wide their communication gap has grown.
A salaryman's drunken ravings in public attract the attention of journalists who coerce him into telling them his life's story.
Benny and Flo are a husband and wife dance team, Sloane and Darrel, traveling around the country as part of a revue. The revue gets picked up and taken to New York City, to be on Broadway. However, it quickly folds, and the two are forced to look for other employment. They eventually find work in a nightclub, becoming famous.But while performing at the nightclub, Flo becomes entranced by a young, sophisticated millionaire playboy, Winston.
Six Californians start a club to discuss the works of Jane Austen. As they delve into Austen's literature, the club members find themselves dealing with life experiences that parallel the themes of the books they are reading.
Juju, a drunken oaf who feels the need of being important to someone---anyone---and his friend The Artist are forced at gunpoint to house a fugitive, Pierre Barbier, in Juju's broken-down home. The urge for being needed is such in Juju that he gives up drinking and takes care of Pierre. But one day Juju finds out that Pierre has been making love to his girl Maria...
When Princess Rosalinda is about to become queen of her country of Costa Luna, the country is invaded by an evil dictator. She is put into the Princess Protection Program, a secret organization funded by royal families that looks after endangered princesses. Rosalinda is taken under the wing of Mason Verica, an agent in the PPP from rural Louisiana. While there, she meets his daughter,
The story of a man who has stopped drinking- and then dreaming- and who thanks to a young man who tries to forget a lost love in alcohol will turn drunk again during an exciting night.
Abhay Gulati and Aaliya Khan have known each other since they were four years old. Their friendship turned into love at the tender age of 15, when Abhay realises Aaliya is the girl for him. Aaliya's life is defined by her burning desire to become an actress and she is unmindful of what or who comes in her way. Abhay who is still unsure about what he wants to do finds himself competing with Aaliya's incessant plans and projects to fulfill her dreams. While their relationship blooms because of their personality differences, the baggage because of these differences also grows silently. Things come to a head when Aaliya decides to go to Australia to study and Abhay has to deal with the prospect of a long term relationship, secretly fearing that he will lose Aaliya forever. He takes a leap of faith and they decide to take this time off from each other to figure out what they want to do.
Aurora and Emma are mother and daughter who march to different drummers. Beginning with Emma's marriage, Aurora shows how difficult and loving she can be. The movie covers several years of their lives as each finds different reasons to go on living and find joy. Aurora's interludes with Garrett Breedlove, retired astronaut and next door neighbor are quite striking.
The career of a disillusioned producer, who is desperate for a hit, is endangered when his star walks off the film set. Forced to think fast, the producer decides to digitally create an actress "Simone" to sub for the star--the first totally believable synthetic actress.
The neurotic New Yorker Woody Allen tells one of the greatest romantic comedies to be set in the city of New York.
Pere Lluc is thirty five and is living an unclear period in his life. He finds out that one of his friends has death 5 months ago and to forget the sorrows he goes out and get drunk and he falls in love.
Two very different women, both in their 40s with grown-up children, are ready to go on with their lives and find love again.
Ji-Hwan (Kwon Sang-Woo) and Dal-Rae (Kim Ha-Neul) are old friends and they have grown up in the same neighborhood. Ji-Hwan admires Hong Kong movie star "Jacky Chan" and wants to be a world action star. Dal-Rae has a desire to be an actress. They always bear grudges against each other with their private weak parts, and they quarrel everyday, however they are great friends who care for each other. One day, Dal-Rae goes out with Young-Hoon who is in the same Taekwondo group as Ji-Hwan. Young-Hoon is a student representative of the department as well as an all-round athlete. Ji-hwan is also dating a girl, Ji-Min, a gorgeous glamour girl who has a well-shaped figure. It seems that there would be no problem between the good friends Ji-Hwan and Dal-Rae, but somehow a strange atmosphere arises after they start seeing someone else. Everybody knows it is more than just a friendship, except Ji-Hwan and Dal-Rae.

© Valossa 2015–2024