The Best Make-Over Movies

Top 10 Best Character Make-Over Movies 

From the light hearted romantic comedies to the dark drama cinema, these are some of the finest examples of film characters who had to dig deep and reinvent themselves in order to find their purpose and make their dreams come true.

 

The path is not always obvious, but the outcome is always worth it!  

 

10 Male Characters:

Just Friends  (2005)


The classic tale of a guy getting friend-zoned by his best friend (the girl next door) who he also happens to be madly in love with. When he moves away in humiliation and then makes it big, it's time to go home again to win her heart. Finally. Maybe.

Starring Ryan Reynolds and Amy Smart




Hitch  (2005)


Guy with no game grows up to be a relationship expert, helping other guys get their women in three dates or less. But if he's so smooth with the ladies, why is he still single? And why does everything go so wrong when he finally meets his Mrs. Right?

Starring Will Smith and Eva Mendes



The Shape of Things  (2003)


College guy cannot believe his great luck when a smart, attractive and elusive girl is suddenly all into him. He figures they're both in love. But does she have another motivation for her interest? And if she keeps encouraging him to change things about himself, will he wake up one day and discover he's not the same person anymore?

Starring Paul Rudd and Rachel Weisz



Think Like a Man  (2012)


A group of guys think they're incredibly clever when they use a popular relationship advice book to fool their women into thinking they're the perfect men. But they're in for some big surprises when they start to realize that by pretending to be the perfect men, they're actually at some point, no longer pretending. 

Starring Kevin Hart, Michael Ealy, Chris Brown, Romany Malco and Jerry Ferrara



Blast From the Past  (1999)


After spending the first 30 years of his life in a bomb shelter with just his deeply paranoid parents after a plane crash is mistaken for the start of an atomic war, guy finally discovers the real world. But will anyone believe his crazy (yet totally legitimate) back story long enough to give him a chance? Complete with real skies, real women and really complicated love problems.

Starring Brendan Fraser and Alicia Silverstone



Mrs. Doubtfire  (1993)


If reluctant-to-grow-up man is going to keep his children and win back his divorce demanding wife, he's going to have to do some extreme changing. And if that means dressing in drag and impersonating a foreign housekeeper, he's determined to do it. He quickly discovers though that it will take more than a few burnt meals and some light dusting. 

Starring Robin Williams and Sally Field



American History X (1998)

Perfectly content with being a racist, arrogant leader in a cult group, guy is in for a serious wake-up call when he finds himself in prison and the only person who will help keep him from getting killed in there is someone he used to think was beneath him. After discovering his whole life ideology is wrong, he needs to clean up his act fast so that his impressionable younger brother doesn't follow in his life-of-regret filled foot steps.

Starring Edward Norton and Edward Furlong


Gattaca  (1997)


In a future society where your genetics determine your options for career and love, one guy is risking everything to break through the limitations. By redefining who he can be and chasing his dreams he must risk a life of deception and discovery. Along the way he may find love and success or ruin and heartache. But if he cannot have it all, he sees no point to his life.

Starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman



The Intouchables

Hoping to get on government assistance by being turned down employment, dead-beat guy discovers there is a whole other way of looking at life (besides the life of poverty, grim prospects and dangerous choices he grew up in) when he actually gets hires to care for a wealthy, educated and life experienced quadriplegic. The unlikely pair are in for a surprising and bumpy road to personal development when they embrace their
differences and realize they have more in common than either realized.

Starring Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache



Slumdog Millionaire

One guy must defy all odds twice. First by surviving his brutal and violently dangerous childhood and second by proving he is not cheating at the televised game "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire". This will require all his wit and street smarts, plus more luck than he may be able to find. If he wins, freedom and love await him. If he loses, more than poverty and failure will haunt him forever.

Starring Dev Patel, Freida Pinto and Ayush Mahesh Khedkar

10 Female Characters:

                                                                                    Pretty Woman  (1990)


One of the best loved romantic comedies of all time. A young woman living day to day, assumes with no education, no family and no career prospects that she has no other option than selling herself on the street. By chance she meets a closed off businessman who shows her that your personal worth is not something that you let other people decide for you.
 
                                                                                   Starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere



                                                                                    Something New  (2006)


Successful, no-nonsense businesswoman has the ideal job and house and now just needs her IBM (Ideal Black Man) to complete her scheduled, orderly and very bland life. Or so she thinks.  A blind date with everything she is NOT looking for however, helps her realize that her life is lacking color, excitement, and spontaneity. And that her Ideal Black Man, might in fact be White.

Starring Sanaa Lathan and Simon Baker




                                                                                    My Big Fat Greek Wedding  (2002)

Few on-screen bag-lady to beauty transformations are quite as dramatic as this one. A soon to hit middle age woman who has the distinction of having no distinction falls for a stranger who happens into her parent's restaurant. Determined to not become the dependent spinster her family has resigned her to, and to win the heart of the man who makes her want more, she must first change how she sees herself so that everyone else will too.

                                                                                    Starring Nida Vardalos and Jon Corbett


                                                                                   200 Pound Beauty (2006)

The voice of an angel and a heart of gold does nothing for a girl trapped in an over-sized body. She realizes that her only hope to catch the eye of the man she loves and gain the career her voice talent could get her, she must undergo a long and painful full body surgery. But she finds out that while being thin and beautiful is wonderful, she no longer knows who she is and may end up losing more than she bargained,        trying to cope with all the unexpected
                                                                                    changes that came with reinventing herself.

                                                                                  Starring  Kim A-joong and Ju Jin-mo



                                                                                 My Fair Lady (1964)

A classic in every sense of the word, this film may have started the make-over trend in movie story telling. When a poor British peddler girl is told by a speech pathologist that by changing the way she speaks she could land a middle class job and provide herself with security, she volunteers for speaking lessons. But when that turns into her being the guinea pig on a wager that she can be passed off as royalty in an
                                                                              upper class ball, she finds out that
                                                                             changing your vocabulary and clothing
                                                                             alters you in ways that there is going back to.

                                                                                Starring Audry Hepburn and Rex Harrison



                                                                                  Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day  (2008)


After getting fired, woman is left homeless, jobless and with just the clothes on her back. Desperate for work she takes what she thinks is a nanny position and is quickly shocked to discover just how much can change in 24 hours. She goes from the soup kitchen to brushing shoulders with the social elite who somehow think that she is a master fixer-upper when it comes to everything from lifestyle choices to
romantic relationships. Can she fool
them long enough to avoid being tossed
                                                                                    to the street as a fraud?  
                                                                                  
                                                                           Starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams



                                                                                 Life or Something Like It  (2002)

By overcoming a chubby, tough adolescence, woman seems to have it all as an up and coming
news anchor. She has a famous boyfriend, fame of her own and will soon to land a coveted high profile news anchor position. Her life is perfect. But when a homeless man who is never wrong, predicts her death in less than a week, she is left scrambling to prevent the inevitable. She hopes that by re-evaluate her life choices she will somehow save her own life.


                                                                                  Starring Angelina Jolie and Edward Burns


                                                                                The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996)

"Always the bridesmaid, never the bride" middle aged woman hits an all time low when the man she's in love with marries her younger (more attractive) sister instead of her. It's hard enough that she still lives with her once Beauty Queen mother, who dates more than she does. When an awkward but attractive college math professor with odd notions about marriage and companionship, answers a dating ad that her  now married sister created for her, she must
                                                                                 figure out the difference between love and
                                                                                romance and what it means to really love and
                                                                                accept yourself.

                                                                               Starring Barbara Streisand, Jeff Bridges,
                                                                              Laurn Bacall, Pierce Brosnan and Mimi Rogers






(*If there is a movie you think should have made this list, feel free to let me know. There is a good chance that I'm saving it for another Top 10 List so check back again!)