The Best Summer Vacation Movies: 21 Must-Watch Classics and New Favourites

Nobody actually has less fun in summer, but we do have less time for screens, which means when we sit down to watch something it had better be worth it. This is my updated list of the best summer vacation movies, built for bingeing on rainy afternoons, cottage nights, and the long drive home from anywhere. Dripping with nostalgia, this list is also great to introduce classics to a younger generation. (Updated May 2026.)

This is my updated list of the best summer vacation movies, organized by mood because life is too short for alphabetical order. There are classics you already love, a few you might have forgotten, and some newer picks that absolutely belong here. Grab the popcorn. Or the Rosé. No judgement.

Classic Summer Movies

These are the ones that basically invented the genre. If summer had a Hall of Fame, every film on this list would be in it.

Jaws (1975)

Before we had a word for it, Steven Spielberg invented the summer blockbuster, and in doing so, made an entire generation terrified of water that did not come out of a tap. Myself included.

Jaws is still the gold standard: genuinely suspenseful, brilliantly paced, and featuring one of the greatest movie lines ever delivered over a glass of bourbon. Chief Brody, sitting at the back of the Orca, gets his first good look at the shark and turns to Quint with the quietest devastation: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” One of the best summer vacation movies to be sure, but maybe don’t watch just before you go in the water.

Dirty Dancing (1987)

Strict dad plus burgeoning sexuality, divided by a 1950s moral conduct code, multiplied by Patrick Swayze in extremely well-fitted pants. The result is a movie that still makes people cry at the “nobody puts Baby in a corner” scene even though they have seen it fourteen times and knew it was coming.

What makes Dirty Dancing hold up is that it’s not actually about dancing. It’s about a young woman figuring out who she is when nobody is watching, and discovering that the most interesting version of herself is not the one her parents had in mind. Also, the soundtrack is perfect and I will not be taking questions.

Grease (1978)

The Grease soundtrack double album was the first album I ever owned. Santa brought it to me in 1979 when I was six years old. The album contains lyrics that are not suitable for a six-year-old. 1979 was also the year I became aware there was no Santa.

Grease remains one of the great summer vacation movies despite, or maybe because of, its absolutely bonkers ending, in which both leads solve their incompatibility by becoming entirely different people. Sandy goes full leather. Danny joins the track team. Love conquers all, apparently, including personality. Watch it for the music, the dancing, and the comforting reminder that high school makes no sense and never did.

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Stand By Me (1986)

More dead bodies!

I mean that affectionately. Stand By Me is a beautiful coming-of-age story about a group of boys who set off through the Oregon woods to find a dead body, and end up finding out considerably more about themselves than they were prepared for. It is funny and strange and then, without warning, it punches you directly in the chest and leaves you staring at the ceiling wondering where the time went.

Based on a Stephen King novella, which tells you everything you need to know about why it is both deeply nostalgic and slightly threatening.

Dazed and Confused (1993)

Alright alright alright.

Set on the last day of school in Austin, Texas in 1976, Dazed and Confused is the definitive “summer is starting” movie. The kids of Lee High School are so deliriously happy to be done with school that they drive around, throw a party, and spend the evening philosophizing about the fundamental cruelty of being young and not yet knowing what any of it means. The soundtrack is outstanding. Matthew McConaughey is playing exactly the guy everyone went to high school with. You know the one.

American Graffiti (1973)

George Lucas made this the year before Star Wars and it could not be more different, which is to say it is quiet, human, and genuinely moving. Set on one long summer night in 1962, it follows a group of friends fresh out of high school who drive around, drag race, and try to figure out what comes next.

It is a movie about the last night of childhood, which sounds heavy, but it is mostly just good music, very cool cars, and the particular melancholy of a summer that everyone knows is ending. Richard Dreyfuss is wonderful in it, and the soundtrack will stay in your head for days.

Meatballs (1979)

A Canadian shout-out is mandatory here: Meatballs was filmed at Camp White Pine in Haliburton, Ontario, and stars Bill Murray in the role he was put on this earth to play, a charismatic summer camp counsellor who is technically in charge but not really doing anything resembling management. The film is deeply of its era in ways that require some anthropological patience.

Murray’s chemistry with young actor Chris Makepeace is genuinely sweet, and it anchors the whole film in something real underneath all the chaos. The “It just doesn’t matter!” speech is worth the price of admission alone, and if you grew up going to summer camp in Ontario, this one will slap you in the face with nostalgia.

Best Summer Vacation Movies for Families

These are the summer vacation movies to watch during summer vacation…ideally with people you love who are also driving you a little bit crazy.

The Great Outdoors (1988)

Take any John Candy movie and it will still be better than you expect while being exactly what you expect. Candy plays a Chicago dad who just wants a peaceful lakeside vacation with his family. What he gets is his insufferable brother-in-law (Dan Aykroyd), a bear with a complicated personal history, and a legendary 96-ounce steak challenge that remains one of the funniest set pieces of the decade.

It is completely suitable for families, mostly. There is a bit involving raccoons and the contents of hot dogs that you may want to fast-forward through depending on your children’s ages, but the rest of it is warm and funny and genuinely sweet. John Candy made everything better just by being in it, and this one is no exception.

National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)

Clark Griswold wants nothing more than to give his family the summer road trip they deserve. The universe has other plans. National Lampoon’s Vacation is perhaps the most accurate depiction of family travel ever committed to film: the gap between the trip you imagined and the trip you actually took, and the stubborn, slightly deranged optimism that keeps you going anyway.

Chevy Chase is at the height of his powers here, and the ending at Walley World is one of the great comedic payoffs in American cinema. If you have ever white-knuckled a family road trip while insisting everyone is having a good time, this movie was made for you.

What About Bob? (1991)

Bob Wiley (Bill Murray) is a profoundly anxious man with a staggering number of phobias who tracks his psychiatrist (Richard Dreyfuss) to his family’s summer home in New Hampshire and then slowly, cheerfully, completely dismantles his life from the inside. This sounds like a thriller. It is in fact one of the funniest movies of the 1990s.

Murray and Dreyfuss are a perfect comedic pairing. The more unbothered Bob becomes, the more completely unhinged his doctor gets, and the whole thing takes place against the backdrop of a genuinely idyllic summer setting, which makes the chaos funnier. It holds up better than almost anything else from that era.

The Way Way Back (2013)

This one flies under the radar and it absolutely should not. Duncan is a painfully awkward 14-year-old stuck at a beach house for the summer with his mother, her terrible boyfriend (Steve Carell, playing against type in the best way), and a growing sense that his life is not going to get better. Then he finds a water park and a job and Sam Rockwell, and things shift.

The Way Way Back is one of the best coming-of-age summer movies made in the last twenty years. It is funny and sad and specific in the way that only truly good writing is. Sam Rockwell should have been nominated for every award available.

Summer Movies That Will Make You Feel Things

Fair warning: some of these will require a second glass of wine.

Mamma Mia! (2008)

Mamma Mia is not a great film by any traditional cinematic measure. The plot is mostly a delivery system for ABBA songs, Pierce Brosnan is famously singing with the confidence of a man who cannot sing, and the whole thing takes place in a Greek island that looks like it was lit by someone who had never seen natural sunlight.

It is also one of the most purely joyful movies ever made, and if you can watch Meryl Streep dancing on a rooftop to “Dancing Queen” without feeling something, I respectfully suggest checking your pulse. It is currently back on Broadway for a limited run, which means there has never been a better time to revisit it. Put it on. Sing along. Do not apologize.

Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (2005)

Four friends spend their first summer apart, connected by a single pair of jeans that somehow fits all of them, which remains the most extraordinary premise in the history of fashion-based narrative. What the movie is actually about is how female friendship sustains you through the moments when nothing else does.

It holds up better than you might expect, and if you watched it as a teenager, you will be surprised by how differently it lands now. Some movies are for a season of your life. This one turns out to be for all of them.

Ticket to Paradise (2022)

George Clooney and Julia Roberts play bitter divorced parents who fly to Bali to stop their daughter’s impulsive wedding and end up, inevitably, reconsidering their own history. The plot is completely predictable from the first five minutes, which is entirely the point.

This is a movie in the tradition of the great Hollywood romantic comedies: beautiful locations, two movie stars with genuine chemistry, and a script that does not ask too much of anyone. Watch it on a Sunday afternoon when you want to feel good and do not want to think very hard. It will deliver exactly that.

Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004)

Underrated, unfairly maligned, and set in Cuba in 1958, which gives it a completely different energy than the original. It does not have Patrick Swayze, though there is a brief cameo that is not quite the same thing, but it has Diego Luna and a soundtrack that is genuinely excellent.

Watch it as its own film rather than a sequel and you might be pleasantly surprised. The dancing is beautiful, the setting is gorgeous, and it asks almost nothing of you except to enjoy it. Sometimes that is exactly what a summer movie should be.

The Parent Trap (1998)

Twins separated at birth by a messy divorce meet at summer camp, realize who they are to each other, and immediately hatch a plan to reunite their parents. Lindsay Lohan, a real cutie patootie here, plays both twins in a dual performance that is genuinely impressive for a 12-year-old, and Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson are genuinely charming together.

The California vineyard setting is gorgeous, the summer camp sequences are fun, and somehow, despite the completely implausible premise, it works every single time. This is the movie that convinced an entire generation that summer camp was where life-changing things happened. It was not wrong.

Summer Horror and Thrillers

Summer camp, dark water, things that go wrong. If this is your genre, pull up a blanket and turn off the lights because these are musts on any summer vacation movies list.

Friday the 13th (1980)

I watched this through my fingers at a Grade 8 slumber party and was terrified for approximately six weeks afterward. Camp Crystal Lake is the gold standard of places you should absolutely not go, and the franchise it launched has spawned enough sequels to fill an entire rainy weekend.

The original holds up as a genuinely effective horror movie, which is not something you can say about many films from 1980. The tension builds slowly and the setting does a lot of the work, which is exactly how good horror is supposed to function. Start here before you go anywhere else in the series.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Kids do something terrible. Someone knows. Things escalate from there. The title is doing a lot of heavy lifting and the film delivers exactly what it promises: a late-90s slasher with a strong cast, a seaside setting, and a hook (literally) that became iconic.

Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar are at peak 1997, and the coastal North Carolina setting gives the whole film a sweaty, oppressive summer atmosphere that actually works in its favour. It is not high art. It is a perfect summer horror movie and it knows exactly what it is.

The Watcher in the Woods (1980)

This one is for anyone who prefers their summer horror on the atmospheric, unsettling side rather than the blood-soaked side. A Disney film, yes really, in which an American family rents a house in the English countryside and starts experiencing very strange things connected to the disappearance of a young woman decades earlier.

It scared me significantly as a child and I have never fully recovered. Bette Davis is in it, which tells you the level of commitment involved, and the ending is genuinely strange in a way that has stuck with me for forty years. If you have kids who are ready for something creepy but not gory, this is the one.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

If you are a horror fan who has somehow not seen Sleepaway Camp, stop what you are doing. It is a summer camp slasher in the Friday the 13th tradition, low budget and deeply weird, and it has one of the most genuinely shocking endings in the genre’s history.

Go in knowing as little as possible. Do not read anything about it first. Do not let anyone who has seen it tell you anything. Just watch it, preferably with someone who also has no idea what is coming, and enjoy the experience of being completely blindsided by a 1983 summer camp movie.

Which Summer Movies Are on Your List?

Every summer vacation movies list is personal. These are the ones I keep coming back to, the ones that feel like the season itself, or that I watched at just the right moment in my life to get permanently embedded. I’m sure I’ve left out your favourite, and I’d genuinely like to know what it is on your list?

Drop it in the comments. Especially if it involves John Candy.