Your Women’s Month movie watchlist: the ultimate girly pop vibes

While we celebrate our struggle heroes and political gamechangers this Women’s Day long weekend, we also deserve a little me-time treat that’s not so serious. We searched Showmax for movies that not only pass the Bechdel test with honours (very simple: the movie has to have at least two female characters who talk to each other about anything other than men), but also have immaculate girly pop vibes. So gather your gang, set up your watchlist and pop that popcorn. We’re going to paint the town pink!

Barbie

It’s all our Barbie Land dreams come true! Whether you’re a collector who can catch every clever reference to the history of Barbie and her fashions, houses, accessories, careers, friends and boyfriends, or just a child at heart who delights in seeing a film acknowledge all the weird little quirks in how girls really play, there’s something to reward your attention in every minute of this film. 

It also offers a vision of a world centred around women, and how this clashes with everyday reality for women and girls – as Barbie (Margot Robbie) discovers when she ventures into the real world and finds out why some girls don’t want to play with her anymore. Meanwhile Ken (Ryan Gosling) tags along with her, and chaos ensues when he brings America’s men-first attitude back to Dream House. Oh, sorry, that’s the Mojo Dojo Casa House.

Girls’ Trip

In this slapstick, buddy road trip comedy movie, lifestyle guru Ryan Pierce (Regina Hall), aka “the next Oprah”, invites her best friends along with her when she heads for New Orleans as the keynote speaker at the Essence Festival. Imagine if your “Flossy Posse” included Sasha (Queen Latifah), Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith), and Dina (a brilliant Tiffany Haddish)! Together at last after five years of missed time thanks to marriage, motherhood and careers, these four are up for anything in the ultimate party city. And we get to come along for the fun. 

Yes, there are rough patches, but this is a group of women who genuinely love one another, and they’re sisters for life. And while Ryan’s life seems perfect, the mask slowly peels back to reveal that she’s boasting about her success to cover up the fact that her marriage is a flop. And after a weekend with her best girls, Ryan decides to get real with a room full of ambitious businesswomen about the lie in her book title “You CAN Have It All”. 

Mean Girls (2004) & Mean Girls (2024)

For women and girls in the early 2000s, Tina Fey’s original Mean Girls movie – based on Rosalind Wiseman’s 2002 self-help book on bullying, Queen Bees and Wannabes – was a quote and meme comedy machine. If you’ve ever heard anyone say “On Wednesdays we wear pink,” or “Get in, loser, we’re going shopping,” this is why. 

Through the eyes of homeschooled teenager Cady (Lindsay Lohan) the film spotlights the hidden bullying that goes on in schools between popular girls “The Plastics” led by queen bee Regina George (Rachel McAdams) and the other kids they crush to keep their status – exposing what performative femininity costs both the girls who are experts at it, and the ones who aren’t. 

Twenty  years on, the 2024 Mean Girls musical retells the story as a musical comedy with Angourie Rice as Cady and Reneé Rapp as Regina, but this time with Cady’s friends Janis (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey) narrating the story instead of Cady, and a more racially integrated school. 

Pitch Perfect, Pitch Perfect 2, and Pitch Perfect 3

All three of these musical comedy films, written by Kay Cannon, centre on women’s college a capella group The Barden Bellas, along with their internal struggles, their rivalry with other a capella groups, their friendships and romances. Above all the Pitch Perfect films celebrate “weird girls” – driven, obsessive, skilled, brilliant, funny and idiosyncratic young women – who’re at the stage where they’re still learning about themselves and all the reasons they’ll need to break the mould to live their best lives. 

The first film introduces the Bellas as a flop until newcomer Beca Mitchell (Anna Kendrick) shakes things up, butting heads with uptight, perfectionist Bella leader Aubrey (Anna Camp) and co-leader Chloe (Brittany Snow), but also igniting the spark that helps the Bellas to outclass their major rivals – the all-male Treblemakers. It’s a film full of outrageous comedy and catchy songs, including one absolute earworm, Cups. The second film sees the Bellas head for the World Championships stage. And the third film has the Bellas, who’ve graduated and moved on, return to perform on an overseas tour with DJ Khaled.

Miss Congeniality and Miss Congeniality 2

Tomboyish FBI agent Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock) undergoes a complete makeover to go undercover in the world of beauty pageants in this action comedy movie and its sequel. It’s goodbye to a male-dominated world she has adapted to all her life, and hello to getting judged for being a woman in a completely different way. Pageants are a bizarro world, high heels are a nightmare, and makeup and tight clothes are their own horror show, despite the help of Gracie’s pageant coach Victor Melling (Michael Caine). But Gracie falls head over feels when the Miss United States contestants welcome her into their world, share their stories and reveal the real humans behind their toothpaste smiles. 

As they bond over their experiences with sexual violence and discuss unionising to push back against how they’re being exploited, it’s time for Gracie to confront her internalised misogyny. In the follow-up film, Gracie’s pageant fame gets in the way of her work as she’s pigeonholed as FBI Barbie. But when pageant director Stan Fields (William Shatner) is kidnapped, guess who has the perfect credentials for tracking him down. 

The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2

We’re back in the early 2000s again for this tale of four lifelong best friends – played by America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn, Blake Lively, and Alexis Bledel – who find an amazing pair of jeans that somehow fits each of them perfectly, despite their bodies being as different as their personalities. As they spend their first-ever summer apart, they send the jeans back and forth to one another, sharing their stories, fighting, making up, exploring life and learning as they come of age through painful family and life changes. 

Based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Ann Brashares, this is a sweet film to wallow in. Friendship helps everything to make sense, including a weird statement like “Pants equal love. Love your sisters and love yourself.” All four stars return for the sequel, which sees the friends spending summer apart again following their first year at college, but reuniting to save the pants when they get stolen in Greece. 

Mamma Mia! and Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again

Romantic musical comedy, directed by Phyllida Lloyd and written by Catherine Johnson (based on her book of the same name), with an all-ABBA soundtrack. Bride-to-be Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), who grew up without a dad, desperately wants her father to walk her down the aisle. So she secretly invites her mother Donna’s (Meryl Streep) three past lovers (Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgård) to the Greek island of Kalokairi where she’s getting married. 

There’s going to be a whole song and dance thanks to this little surprise, especially as the wedding has Donna and her friends Rosie (Julie Walters) and Tanya (Christine Baranski) remembering their wild youth together as bandmates who performed as Donna and the Dynamos. In the sequel, Sophie uncovers more about Donna’s history with her three fathers as she reopens the family hotel. Here’s to retiring with your BFFs to an island where you can drink, dance, and putter around the garden together. 

M3GAN

We had to sneak at least one horror onto here! What’s more girliepop than creating your own living doll, dressing it up in an iconic outfit, and setting it loose to kill off anyone who threatens the happiness of a little girl? Get him, M3GAN!

Yeah, okay, it’s not that simple. But while the killer doll creates the perfect distraction in the form of the TikTok dance of the season, we can also slip in some serious discussion about keeping girls happy and safe vs letting them grow emotionally, and the fact that not every woman is going to be the perfect mommy. Now round it off with a horror movie-classic warning about the perils of misusing AI to replace delicate tasks that need a human touch. 

Also watch

Ocean’s Eight: Sandra Bullock leads a heist team to rip off the MET Gala, including Rihanna, Awkwafina, Mindy Kaling, Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, and Sarah Paulson. 

Greatest Days:Aisling Bea, Alice Lowe, Amaka Okafor, and Jayde Adams play four childhood BFFs who reunite after 25 years to go see the band Take That during their reunion tour.

The Hotwives of Las Vegas: If the Housewives franchise is your guilty pleasure, try this gleefully wicked parody with Tymberlee Hill, Angela Kinsey, Errin Hayes and Casey Wilson.

Sisters: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler play polar opposite sisters who revert to behaving like kids when their parents make them clear out their childhood rooms before they sell the house.

Book Club: The Next Chapter:Book club buddies played by Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen, have the time of their lives touring Italy together. 

80 for Brady: Four lifelong best friends played by Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno and Sally Field go on a road trip together to the Superbowl.

Little Women: Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Saoirse Ronan, and Eliza Scanlen star in the OG story about sisterhood, growing up, fighting and making up with your friends for life. 

Rough Night: Friendship is put to the test when a bride and her friends – played by Scarlett Johansson, Jillian Bell, Kate McKinnon, Ilana Glazer, and Zoë Kravitz – accidentally kill their bachelorette party stripper. 

The Miracle Club (from 29 August): A group of Dublin women played by Dame Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates, Agnes O’Casey, and Laura Linney go on a pilgrimage to Lourdes together, leaving the men in their lives to fend for themselves. 

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: Four little girls take a blood oath to be best friends forever, so when one of their own kids later goes public about her unhappy childhood, they tell her the truth about her mom’s life. With Sandra Bullock, Ellen Burstyn, Ashley Judd, Dame Maggie Smith and more.