(Don’t) bury your gays. 15 LGBTQ+ films with a guaranteed happy ending

The general consensus on the internet is that we need more gay movies with happy endings. This is an understandable reaction to a media landscape that too often relegates queer characters and storylines exclusively to the realm of tragedy or focuses too much on the trials and tribulations of coming out. It seems as if Hollywood has begun to respond accordingly: the last few years have seen a wave of sweet queer romantic comedies, as well as a handful of films featuring queer people who are refreshing, bold, and heterosexual. up stupid (#equality).

But that doesn’t mean that every gay film until the 2020s ended in tragedy. In fact, there were plenty of gay films with happy endings as early as the mid-1980s, and I’ve put together a watchlist of 15 of them for your viewing pleasure. To be clear, not every film listed here is a happy one all the way through; In fact, some of them are quite tragic before things ultimately turn around for the protagonists. Again, not every happy ending is geared towards a romantic outcome, although many are.

But taken together, they prove that there are plenty of feel-good LGBTQ+ films in the archive for us to watch as we continue to push for a wider range of queer cinema. Some of these films deliver all the trope-rom-com goodness of your dreams, others will make you sob with sadness before crying tears of joy. Read on for 15 of our favorite queer movies with happy endings.

But I’m a cheerleader (1999)