50 Best PG-13 Movies on Netflix Right Now

50 Best PG-13 Movies on Netflix Right Now

April 21, 2025

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While it’s true you won’t run out of options on Netflix, it can be tricky to find titles that cater to your specific needs. Netflix’s own algorithm isn’t that helpful either, because you just know it puts its original movies above everything else, regardless of whether they’re objectively good or not. That’s where we come in. agoodmovietowatch is a portal for highly-rated yet little-known movies. And in this specific list, we round up our best recommendations rated PG-13 on Netflix, in case you’re in the mood to watch something with your teen.

 

21. Miss Granny (2014)

7.7

Genres

Comedy, Drama, Music

Director

Dong-hyuk Hwang, Hwang Dong-hyuk

Actors

Dong-il Song, In-hwan Park, Jung Jin-young, Kim Soo-hyun

Moods

Character-driven, Easy, Funny

The fantasy of being able to have the body you once had is impossible in real life, but we can watch it play out in fiction. While previous depictions of this idea rightfully point out ageism and how much worse people treat the old, Miss Granny also celebrates the wisdom and experience that could only come from the years Oh Mal-soon has gone through, through an engaging script and the quirky performance of Shim Eun-kyung. It’s so funny seeing people taken aback, surprised, and astounded by old Oh Mal-soon in her young body, but what makes it work is the way director Hwang Dong-hyuk introduces her to us bit by bit, crafting a character that at first glance seemed to be a rude and controlling grandma, but is actually a woman that didn’t get to enjoy her youth due to the sacrifices she made for her loved ones. Miss Granny makes the case that there are timeless things that we can return to and appreciate, but there are also things that we’re willing to let go of our youth for.

22. The Founder (2016)

7.6

Genres

Drama, History

Director

John Lee Hancock

Actors

B.J. Novak, John Carroll, John Carroll Lynch, John Lee Hancock

Moods

True-story-based, Well-acted

Michael Keaton is the founder of McDonald’s. Well, not exactly, because this movie is the story of how the man he plays, Ray Kroc, took over the company from two very innovative brothers named Mac and Dick. Played by John Carroll Lynch and none other than Nick Offerman, the brothers put up a fight while Kroc works to franchise the name and make it into a billion-dollar empire. It’s a real-life story of the pursuit of the American dream through both persistence and ruthlessness, retracing Kroc’s history from a struggling salesman to a fiercely pragmatic business giant. A crazy story and a cautionary tale of sorts, this is a movie that showcases America for what it is.

23. tick, tick… BOOM! (2021)

7.6

Genres

Drama, Music

Director

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Actors

Adam Pascal, Alex Lacamoire, Alexandra Shipp, André De Shields

Moods

Character-driven, Emotional, Sunday

With its origins as a full-length rock monologue, it’s understandable if Tick, Tick… Boom! comes off as overly concerned with its protagonist’s personal anxieties and not the larger social and health crises happening right outside his door. But while it really doesn’t offer much insight into the AIDS epidemic, or even the art scene of 1990s New York, the helplessness that Jonathan Larson feels in the face of his own inability to save the world comes off as honest expression nonetheless. Andrew Garfield and a strong cast that includes Robin de Jesús and Vanessa Hudgens give purpose and energy to this somewhat messy character study that still manages to land its emotional beats.

24. Simón (2023)

7.6

Genres

Drama

Director

Diego Vicentini, Diego Vincentini

Actors

Carlos Guerrero, Christian McGaffney, Franklin Vírgüez, Gabriel Bonilla

Moods

Challenging, Discussion-sparking, Dramatic

While we would like to think that we would do all we can to fight against a tyrannical regime, it’s not as easy as we think, and there are plenty of consequences that we wouldn’t foresee, living in relative peace. Diego Vicentini’s debut feature is a portrait of Venezuelan dissidents forced to flee the country, expanding on the short he made five years previously to flesh out the double lives most exiles go through– the angry yet hopeful protests they left behind in their homeland, and the peaceful, yet guilt-ridden, traumatized lives they now lead in another country. While it’s easy to expect certain moments, especially for people familiar with the country’s situation, Simón nevertheless was a film that needed to be made in order to shed light on this issue.

25. Happy as Lazzaro (2018)

7.5

Genres

Drama, Fantasy

Director

Alice Rohrwacher, Female director

Actors

Adriano Tardiolo, Agnese Graziani, Alba Rohrwacher, Alessandro Genovesi

Moods

Lovely, Quirky, Warm

Set in 1970s Italian countryside, this is a quirky movie that’s full of plot twists.

Lazzaro is a dedicated worker at a tobacco estate. His village has been indebted to a marquise and like everyone else, he works without a wage and in arduous conditions.

Lazzaro strikes a friendship with the son of the marquise, who, in an act of rebellion against his mother, decides to fake his own kidnapping. The two form an unlikely friendship in a story that mixes magical realism with social commentary.

26. Bad Genius (2017)

7.5

Genres

Comedy, Crime, Drama

Director

Nattawut Poonpiriya

Actors

Aokbab Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying, Chanon Santinatornkul, Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying, Ego Mikitas

Moods

Gripping, Intense, Smart

It looks like something you’ve already seen before: a student genius turns a simple high school cheating scheme into a full-blown, high-stakes heist. But layered with great acting, taut writing, and sharp observations about the ways in which education (and society in general) fails its students, Bad Genius turns a familiar premise into something genuinely exciting and impressively affecting. It’s everything you want a caper movie to be: smart and thrilling, with almost no moment to breathe, and of course, peppered with characters you can’t help but root and be nervous and excited for. 

27. Love at First Sight (2023)

7.5

Genres

Drama, Romance

Director

Vanessa Caswill

Actors

Andromeda Godfrey, Anthony Warren, Ben Hardy, Dexter Fletcher

Moods

Easy, Heart-warming, Lighthearted

Watching Love at First Sight, there are times you catch it almost falling into eye-rolling clichés, like when Hadley loses Oliver’s number or when their first kiss is interrupted by someone suddenly opening the door. But the film’s self-assured and self-aware charm subverts conventions and saves it from being just another cheesy rom-com you’d sooner skip on Netflix. The statistic-heavy narration by Jameela Jamil manages to be both amusing and romantic, and casting Jamil as an omnipresent chameleon who is fate-personified is an inspired move that helps the film move along smoothly. Though they lack sensual chemistry, Richardson and Hardy are individually, abundantly charming. It’s hard not to be moved by their stories, as common as they may be in movies like this. Love at First Sight is fluffy and familiar, but it is also the sort of heartwarming fare you’ll want to watch again and again, especially at Christmastime, when the movie is set.  

28. The Saint of Second Chances (2023)

7.5

Genres

Documentary

Director

Jeff Malmberg, Morgan Neville

Actors

Agnes Albright, Bill Veeck, Charley Rossman, Charlie Day

Moods

Easy, Feel-Good, Heart-warming

You don’t need to know a lot about baseball to appreciate The Saint of Second Chances. It has enough going on to keep you hooked from start to end, beginning with Jeff Daniels’ inimitable voice as the narrator and Charlie Day’s inspired casting as the younger Veeck, all the way down to the Veecks’ fascinating ties with American sports history and Mike’s inspiring and heartwarming second-chance philosophy. It all gets a bit too much at times, as if the filmmakers themselves were overwhelmed with their abundant material and creative decisions, but it’s executed with so much care and love that it seems as if this is the only way it could’ve come out: a wonderful mess.

29. The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)

7.4

Genres

Adventure, Comedy, Drama

Director

Michael Schwartz, Tyler Nilson

Actors

Ann Owens, Aurelian Smith Jr., Bruce Dern, Dakota Johnson

Moods

A-list actors, No-brainer, True-crime

This buddies-on-the-road drama was the highest-grossing independent film of 2019, which tells you everything you need to know about it: it’s familiar, but it’s not overblown.

A fisherman (Shia LaBeouf) has to flee after vandalizing the property of a rival fishing group who bully him. On the way, he meets a man with Down syndrome, who, unexpectedly, is on a journey to become a pro wrestler.

30. The Half of It (2020)

7.3

Genres

Comedy, Drama, Romance

Director

Alice Wu, Female director

Actors

Abigail Donaghy, Alec Tincher, Alexandre Bagot, Alexxis Lemire

Moods

Easy, Feel-Good, Slice-of-Life

This lovely romance is about Ellie, a straight-A student who takes money from a classmate, Paul, to write love letters for him. Ellie does this to help with the household bills but there is one big problem: the girl Paul is in love with is also the girl Ellie has a crush on.

This might seem like the set-up for a standard Netflix comedy (and if you’re thinking Bergerac, you’re right, it is based on the famous play) but as the introduction of the film reads: “This is not a love story … not one where anyone gets what they want.”

It is in fact, personal work from a brilliant and quality-focused director, Alice Wu. Her last movie, Saving Face, a pioneering lesbian romance set in an Asian American context, was released a long 15 years ago.

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