12 Must-Watch Movies and TV Episodes for Your Next Road Trip

Based solely on genre, the movies Nomadland , Almost Famous , and Pee-wee’s Big Adventure have little in common. But look further and you’ll find that driving each film’s narrative is the concept of the open road. Whether you’re watching a portrait of female self discovery, a rock concert tour diary, or a chaotic comedy, all of these can be categorized as road-trip movies.

Watching a road-trip movie (or road-trip episode of a TV show) can feel like the closest thing to actually embarking on one. Here are 12 movies and TV episodes our editors recommend watching to help you mentally prepare for your own road trip, or perhaps just give you a dust of wanderlust.

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985)

Not only is Pee-wee’s Big Adventure the best road trip movie, but it is, unequivocally, the best Tim Burton movie (the director’s first feature film). In a world of bloated cinema, this film is a tight 90 minutes and it moves. Pee-wee, played delightfully, sincerely weird by the late Paul Reubens, finds the joy in the little things: pasting his face into grotesque shapes with masking tape in the mirror; trading insults with adult-sized, rich kid-coded bully Francis (Mark Holton); and collecting the latest ephemera from his local magic shop. But more than anything, Pee-wee loves his bike. So of course, when it’s stolen, busted from an intricately wrapped web of steel chain next to a menacing animatronic clown, Pee-wee is distraught, paranoid, and single-minded in his mission to find his bike. It’s a journey that takes the gray-suited, red bowtie-wearing chortling man-child on the road. Hitchhiking with ghostly truck drivers and felons on the run, he inspires lonesome truckstop waitresses to live out their dreams of going to Paris, and even visits the Alamo. It’s endlessly quotable, totally iconic, and an absolute masterpiece of silliness. — Brenna Houck, cities manager, Eater

Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)

The movie that put Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal on the map, Y Tu Mama Tambien tells the story of two friends, played by Luna and Bernal, who lure a married woman into a road trip with the promise of showing her a secret beach that they made up. Along the way, secrets are revealed through a series of drunken and debaucherous nights, and we learn the duo’s “bro code,” formally known as the Manifesto Charolastra. I loved this movie so much in college that (I am embarrassed to admit) my roommate and I called each other “charolastra” for years. – Sarah Medina, managing editor,

“Truth or Dare,” Girls (Season 3, Episode 2), 2014

In this episode of the fantastic HBO series Girls , Hannah, Shoshanna, and Adam rent a car and leave New York City to pick up their elusive friend Jessa from rehab. It hits all of the road-trip tenets from the jump—the first clip cuts to Hannah and Shosh obnoxiously singing along to Maroon 5 as Adam, the driver (points if you get the joke), becomes so annoyed that he breaks the car stereo. Then there’s the classic diner pitstop, where the characters fuel up on pancakes and biscuits amid growing tension. Along the way, the three of them engage in the type of exhausted and existential conversation that can only emerge from a road trip, which is rife with revelations—“I will never be bored as long as there’s Halloween,” Shosh says. What I love most about this episode is that watching it feels like a road trip: there’s humor, uneasiness, disagreements, and, most quintessentially, bonding. –Kelsey Allen, associate editor,

It Happened One Night , 1934

Likely the very first road-trip movie, It Happened One Night is the ultimate opposites-attract romantic comedy. Even if you haven't watched this Frank Capra classic, you've definitely seen its most famous scene: Claudette Colbert hitchhiking by lifting her skirt to a scandalous mid-thigh after Clark Gable gives up on waving his thumb at every passing Plymouth. The story follows a wealthy socialite (Colbert) who escapes her overprotective daddy and hops a Greyhound bus to New York to reunite with her new husband (a gold digger Daddy doesn't approve of). On the bus she meets a down-on-his-luck newspaper reporter (Gable) who agrees to help her get to the city if she gives him the scoop on the story. Hijinks ensure—she misses the bus! their bags are stolen! they have to share a hotel room!—and, spoiler alert, they fall in love. The movie swept at the Oscars, winning all five major categories, and 91 years later, it's just as wonderful. –Ellen Carpenter, contributing editor,

“High-Like,” Insecure (Season 3, Episode 5), 2018

Before the White Lotus brought us incestuous romps and crappy carry-ons, another show took a clear glimpse at the magic and misery of group travel on the open road. Issa Rae’s groundbreaking series Insecure follows two best friends (Rae’s Issa Dee and Yvonne Orji’s Molly Carter) as they navigate their 30s amid a tangle of friends, romantic interests, and work frenemies. In what is definitively one of the best episodes of the series—not only for its comedic prowess but its brutal candor about the realities of group road trips—we see Issa, Molly, and their friends hit the open road to attend Coachella, or at least attempt to do so. As with any road trip, no matter how well planned, hi-jinks ensue, from delayed departures and overpacked itineraries to ill-timed edibles and “are we too old for this?” anxieties. Yet, the resulting chaos finally shakes the group of friends loose from their respective ruts (malcontent with motherhood, workplace sexism, dashed dating hopes, etc.) freeing these besties to do one of the most adventurous things possible on the open road: openly communicate their true feelings and failures, rather than leaving their relationships in cruise control until they crash. Luckily, no cars are wrecked in the process, but there are plenty of hilarious yet sincere crash outs. –Jesse Sparks, senior editor,

Salesman (1969)

Traveling Bible salesmen are the subject of this midcentury documentary, which will make you ponder the meaning of religion and capitalism. This isn’t your traditional road-trip movie, but it is in a sense a road trip. A group of salesmen with thick Boston accents travel to Florida to pitch Bibles unrelentingly to housewives, who politely try to say no while being guilted into spending their week’s grocery allowance on the word of God. It’s an awkward, tense Maysles brothers documentary that captures interior working-class life in the late ’60s. It’s as funny at times as it is stressful to watch. A personal favorite scene: A husband in a white tank top turns up an orchestral rendition of “Yesterday” by the Beatles on a record player as he smokes a cigarette and looks on at his wife in curlers getting the hard sell on the Good Book. — BH

Thelma & Louise (1991)

There are few road-trip films more memorable than Thelma & Louise , a movie that’s as much about being on the lamb as it is about female friendships and violence against women. Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis) and Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon) take off on a weekend road trip that never really ends. A man they meet in a bar rapes Thelma in a parking lot, and in a fit of rage partially triggered by her own traumatic experience of sexual violence Louise shoots him, forcing the pair to flee for Mexico. The final scene is iconic, but everything in between is, too. –BH

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

A little girl named Olive (Abigail Breslin) with gap teeth and thick, goofy glasses hits the road in a bright-yellow VW bus with her family to live out her beauty pageant dreams at the “Little Miss Sunshine” competition in Redondo Beach, California, in this movie which runs to the soundtrack of Devotchka. The cast includes Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, a mid-aughts emo’d Paul Dano, a clinically depressed Steve Carell, and the late Alan Arkin, a heroin-using grandfather who choreographs Olive’s pageant routine. As with most road trips—particularly ones where money is tight and so is space in the car—things go wrong, but Olive sticks the landing... in her own unique way in the end. –BH

Almost Famous (2000)

A young, extremely sheltered teenage boy, William Miller (Patrick Fugit), manages to convince Rolling Stone ’s editors that he’s an adult rock journalist in this endearing and romantic vision of 1970s music culture. William falls in love with music thanks to a gift of records from his sister Anita (Zooey Deschanel). He eventually falls under the wing of music journalist legend Lester Bangs (played spectacularly by Philip Seymour Hoffman), much to the dismay of his anxious mother (Frances McDormand). When William pitches a piece on an up-and-coming band, Stillwater, he’s spirited away from home on a tour bus. On the ever-longer reporting trip, William falls under the thrall of a band groupie Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), a manic pixie dreamgirl guide who embodies the romantic spirit of the tour. The cast in this film is sometimes jarring on a rewatch; it’s absolutely stacked with talent, from Anna Paquin to Bijou Phillips to Marc Maron. Even Jimmy Fallon is in this. –BH

“Gilmore Girls Only,” Gilmore Girls (Season 7, Episode 17), 2007

Three generations of Gilmore Girl decide to road trip it south to Charlotte, North Carolina, and in the process they confront some of the core tensions of the show: namely, Emily’s jealousy and anger over her daughter Lorelai abandoning her rich life in Hartford, Connecticut, to raise her baby in a small town under the wing of an innkeeper who becomes like a surrogate mother and grandmother to Lorelai and Rory. So, naturally, when that innkeeper (played in this episode by Kathy Baker) gets married, Emily invites herself along on Lorelai and Rory’s road trip to the wedding. It’s awkward and cathartic. –BH

“The Gang Hits the Road,” It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Season 5, Episode 2), 2009

What’s the opposite of inspiration? A warning, I guess. And like almost everything else the gang gets up to on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia , the show’s madcap road-trip episode is a cautionary tale. They set out early one morning—11 a.m. on a Tuesday—on an old-school drive from Philly to the Grand Canyon. In this case, “old school” means smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, dragging an (initially) empty trailer, and using only vintage paper maps on the way. After a predictably unpredictable chain of events that includes a run-in with a cyclist, picking up a hitchhiker, and an audacious attempt at cooking hot dogs in the trailer, it turns out that the gang never actually gets out of Philly; the whole thing is a bust. But all is not lost—Dee makes a friend, Mac gets a great bargain, and Charlie tries a pear for the first time ever (“It tastes like sand”). Even on the worst road trip imaginable, there’s fun to be had. Maybe it is a little inspirational, after all.

— Ben Mesirow, associate editor, Want more ? Follow us on Instagram , TikTok , Facebook , Pinterest , and YouTube .