These Are Our Favourite Guilty Pleasure Films

What’s your guilty pleasure movie? Either one you feel like you can’t stop coming back to, or one that you know isn’t that great, but you can’t resist putting on every so often anyway. We asked The Handbook team to come up with the films that they love to indulge in.

Harry Potter

“Does it get any more nostalgic guilty pleasure than Harry Potter? Probably not. It’s a reliable comfort watch for me each year – especially in autumn/winter. The best film in the franchise is, hands down, The Goblet of Fire – end of discussion.” – Natasha Harding, Digital Editor

The story of The Boy Who Lived might be the ultimate comfort viewing and something of a guilty pleasure- but only because they’re so bingeable. Not only are the autumn months the perfect time to watch them, but it’s also only a short time now until the HBO series makes its debut.

Mamma Mia!

Definitely a guilty pleasure for many, Mamma Mia combines the endless tunes of ABBA with the star power of Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and more. Amanda Seyfried’s Sophie invites three men to her wedding (played by Brosnan, Firth and Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård), with any of the three possibly being her real father. Guilty pleasure? Maybe. Great music? Definitely.

Any killer animal movie…

“I’m saying Jaws because it’s the obvious one, but I love any weird animal-killer movie. The worse it is, the better. Anything on Shark Week, King Kong, Jurassic Park, Piranha.”

“I’ll go through phases where I just binge a ridiculous number of them. There’s something about watching an unhinged animal wreak havoc that is just so much fun. I genuinely don’t care how bad they are.” – Caitlin Ferguson, Senior Campaign Success Manager

The Twilight Saga

“The minute Autumn arrives, I shamelessly begin my Twilight Saga binge. Yes, some of the acting is comically bad. Yes, the script isn’t winning any best screenplay awards, but to me, it’s perfect. At this point, a September rewatch has become somewhat of a tradition for me, and one that I hope to keep up for many years to come.” – Amelia Morgan, Culture and Lifestyle Writer

Is there a greater guilty pleasure, for a certain generation, than the Twilight Saga? 20 years after the first book, it remains irresistible to many.

Mean Girls

“A piece of pop culture history at this point, I have yet to find a more iconic film than Mean Girls. It has provided endless meme material to millennials and younger generations, and I don’t know about you, but I plan to celebrate October 3rd in a pink outfit… even if it’s not a Wednesday (iykyk).” – Nicole Duret, Senior Graphic Designer

Definitely a guilty pleasure if you’re always quoting films… Mean Girls is the gift that keeps on giving and, to this day, has lost none of its pop culture cachet.

Any animation from Disney or Pixar

From Toy Story to The Lion King, Encanto to Hercules, Disney proves that animated movies definitely aren’t just for kids and can remain classics forever.

So consider this your sign to go back down memory lane and revisit the best of their catalogue. The only question is, which is the best? (We’d argue it’s Ratatouille).

The Quick and the Dead

“Most of Raimi’s work can probably be considered guilty pleasures… but i’ll go for the underrated The Quick and the Dead, not least because I do love a Western. Not only is the very 90s cast a great lineup, but there’s plenty of the director’s signature style wrapped in a very entertaining film. Westerns are few and far between these days, so it remains one I come back to.” Rufus Punt, Contributing Entertainment Writer

A 1990s take on the Western, The Quick and the Dead is directed by Sam Raimi and stars a bumper cast that includes Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe and a pre-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio. It follows a gunfighter known as “The Lady” (Stone) who rides into a town controlled by John Herod (Hackman). She enters into a Robin Hood-style competition to prove she’s the best shooter around.