Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
"Stay classy, San Diego." Will Ferrell's mustachioed 1970s news anchor Ron Burgundy and his idiot news team gave the 2000s an endlessly quotable comedy — "I love lamp," "60% of the time, it works every time."
#Cult Classic
41 items
Antitrust
A tech-industry thriller starring Ryan Phillippe as a young programmer recruited by a charming but sinister software CEO (Tim Robbins) who steals code and eliminates threats. Released with Microsoft's real antitrust battle still in the headlines, it became a cult artifact of the dot-com era despite critical and commercial failure.
Arrested Development
A razor-sharp comedy about a wealthy, deeply dysfunctional real-estate family, canceled after just three seasons on Fox but too clever to fade. Low ratings, massive critical acclaim, and jokes that rewarded rewatching — there was always money in the banana stand. When Netflix revived it, the show's legacy finally caught up to its ambition.
Beerfest
An international drinking competition disguised as a sports movie. Two brothers spread their grandfather's ashes at Oktoberfest and accidentally stumble into Beerfest—a secret underground tournament where nations compete in beer games—then return home to assemble an American dream team. Like Super Troopers before it, its cult life was lived on DVD, in dorm rooms and at beer-soaked parties.
Beetlejuice
A sweetly dead young couple, stuck haunting their own house, hire a raunchy "bio-exorcist" to scare off the living — say his name three times and chaos answers. It's a 1988 film, but between the VHS shelf, October cable reruns, and the Saturday-morning cartoon, Beetlejuice belonged to 90s kids too.
Bring It On
A new cheer captain inherits her high school's trophy-winning squad — then discovers the entire championship legacy is built on stolen routines, and the team that had them first is coming to take back what's theirs. A cheerleader movie that turned out to be a conversation about who gets credit.
Cruel Intentions
A sharp, seductive update of Laclos' 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses transplanted to Manhattan's prep-school elite, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe. Written and directed by Roger Kumble, it became a defining late-90s teen drama with genuine cultural impact.
Donnie Darko
The film that nearly died at the box office six weeks after 9/11, then rose from the dead through midnight screenings and DVD to become the 2000s' defining cult artifact. A nightmarish fever dream about time loops and a rabbit suit that you'd lend to friends with just 'watch it' and argue about until 3 a.m.
Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead
Christina Applegate as a 17-year-old who fakes her way into a fashion-industry job when the elderly babysitter dies and mom's away in Australia. It opened quietly in 1991, then VHS and cable turned it into a cult classic. "I'm right on top of that, Rose" — a catchphrase that never died.
Empire Records
One chaotic day at an indie record store, a crew of lovable misfits, and a washed-up '80s pop star named Rex Manning. It bombed in theaters — then home video made it a cult classic, and fans still celebrate Rex Manning Day every April 8. Damn the Man. Save the Empire.
EuroTrip
A post-graduation beer-fueled romp across Europe in search of a German pen pal who turns out to be a girl. The premise is thin and the plot is chaos, but it left behind "Scotty Doesn't Know"—a breakup anthem so infectious it outgrew the movie—and earned itself a permanent slot in the dorm-room DVD rotation.
![Video thumbnail — The Fifth Element - Official® Trailer [HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/199EvXTKucc/maxresdefault.jpg)
The Fifth Element
Luc Besson's gloriously maximalist 1997 sci-fi spectacle: Bruce Willis as flying-cab driver Korben Dallas, Milla Jovovich as the orange-haired Leeloo, Gary Oldman chewing scenery as Zorg, and Chris Tucker's motor-mouthed Ruby Rhod. Jean Paul Gaultier costumes, a blue alien diva, and a plot to save Earth with four stones and one perfect being.
From Dusk Till Dawn
For an hour it's a Tarantino crime movie: two outlaw brothers, a hostage family, a run for the Mexican border. Then Salma Hayek finishes her dance, the bar staff show their real teeth, and it becomes something else entirely. Nobody who rented it blind ever forgot the whiplash.
Grandma's Boy
A 36-year-old video-game tester gets evicted and moves in with his grandma and her roommates, where he's surrounded by pajama-wearing grandmothers, a dealer named Dante with a pet chimp, and the crushing weight of being a grown man living with his grandma. Critics absolutely eviscerated it. Then the DVD turned it into a canonical stoner comedy.
Half Baked
Dave Chappelle's stoner comedy about selling lab weed to bail out a friend who accidentally killed a police horse. Critics buried it in January 1998 — then VHS, cable, and every college dorm in America dug it back up. It's also the first thing Chappelle and Neal Brennan ever built together, five years before Chappelle's Show.
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
Two best friends, one impossible late-night craving, and an obstacle course of absurdity standing between them and White Castle sliders. A modest $9 million theatrical release that became a genuine DVD phenomenon — and a quietly groundbreaking one: a mainstream studio comedy carried by two Asian-American leads, at a time when the industry insisted that couldn't work.
Hocus Pocus
The Sanderson sisters — Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy — resurrected in Salem on Halloween night, chasing children and belting "I Put a Spell on You." A box-office flop in 1993 that became the ultimate Halloween rewatch tradition.
Invader Zim
Zim is an alien invader from the Irken empire sent to conquer Earth, except he's terrible at it — and his malfunctioning robot servant GIR, disguised as a green dog, is somehow worse. Jhonen Vasquez's creation was Nickelodeon's darkest, weirdest cartoon, and the network killed it fast. The kids who found it never let go.
Jake Gyllenhaal
Born into Hollywood royalty but broke through on his own terms—as the troubled daydreamer who became every indie film's favorite wunderkind. By mid-decade, he'd pivoted into blockbusters without losing the arthouse credibility, proving the 2000s' best leading men didn't have to pick a lane.
My So-Called Life
Nineteen episodes of Angela Chase's unsparing inner monologue — and of Jordan Catalano leaning against things. One season, canceled, and mourned so hard the internet invented the save-our-show campaign for it.
Napoleon Dynamite
A deadpan indie comedy about an awkward teenager in small-town Idaho navigating high school, family chaos, and his own social ineptitude. Released in 2004, the low-budget film became a quotable phenomenon with unforgettable moments — "Gosh!", "Vote for Pedro", tetherball showdowns — and spawned endless merchandise and T-shirt catchphrases.
Powder
The strange outsider parable about a hairless, pale savant with electromagnetic powers — lightning-struck before birth, raised in a cellar, thrust into a small town that doesn't understand him. It split critics but became exactly the kind of weird 90s rental-store fixture that stays lodged in memory.
Sky High
Disney's superhero high school movie, where freshmen get sorted into Heroes and 'Hero Support.' Will Stronghold — powerless son of the world's two greatest supers — starts ninth grade at a school that floats above the clouds, and Kurt Russell plays super-dad with total sincerity.
Space Cases
Nickelodeon's scrappy live-action space adventure: misfit students and two adults stranded aboard an alien ship, trying to get home. It ran 26 episodes across 1996–97, ended mid-arc with the crew no closer to Earth, and vanished — becoming the show half the kids who watched it aren't sure was real.
![Video thumbnail — STARSHIP TROOPERS [1997]– Official Trailer (HD)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zPYuV_jGk7M/maxresdefault.jpg)
Starship Troopers
Paul Verhoeven's militaristic sci-fi satire based on Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 novel, starring Casper Van Dien as a young soldier fighting giant bugs in a fascistic future society. A visual spectacle that was widely misunderstood upon release but has become a celebrated cult classic.
Step Brothers
Two middle-aged men still living with their parents accidentally become stepbrothers when their single parents get married. The bunk-bed disaster, the friendship declaration, the Catalina Wine Mixer — a movie so quotable it became a cult classic through cable reruns and endless friend-group recitations.
Super Troopers
A low-budget indie that became a word-of-mouth empire. Five Vermont state troopers prank their way through a dead stretch of highway—the all-'meow' traffic stop, the maple-syrup chug, Farva's immortal 'liter of cola'—while feuding with the local cops. Theaters shrugged; the DVD made it a generation's comedy bible.
Tank Girl
Lori Petty as a punk rebel with a tank in a drought-ravaged 2033, fighting the corporation that owns the water. The studio recut it, the comic's creators disowned it, and it bombed — then became a cult classic anyway on pure riot-grrrl attitude.
The Big Lebowski
A mistaken-identity bowling noir built on White Russians, nihilists, and the definitive 90s character: the Dude, a Los Angeles pot-smoking bowling bum who stumbles into a kidnapping plot. Its theatrical run was modest and critics were lukewarm. Then something strange happened: it became THE cult film of its generation, spawning a religion and a traveling film festival dedicated entirely to its worship.
The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)
Alexandre Dumas' revenge classic played gloriously straight: betrayal, a hidden fortune, sword fights, and vengeance served exquisitely cold. A January sleeper in 2002 that grew into dad-canon — the cable movie you'd catch on a Sunday afternoon and watch to the end, every single time.
The Faculty
When the teachers at a sleepy Ohio high school start acting strange, six student misfits figure out the faculty is being taken over by alien parasites — Invasion of the Body Snatchers relocated to sixth period. The cast is absurdly stacked: Elijah Wood and Josh Hartnett versus a teachers' lounge containing Robert Patrick, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, and, yes, Jon Stewart.
The Girl Next Door
A straight-arrow high-school senior, a gorgeous new neighbor with a secret past, and the eternal question: "is the juice worth the squeeze?" It underperformed in theaters — then found its real audience on DVD and late-night cable, where it quietly became one of the 2000s' most rewatched teen comedies.
The Goonies
The 1985 adventure every 90s kid knew by heart from VHS and cable reruns — misfit kids chasing One-Eyed Willy's pirate treasure under Astoria, Oregon, with the Fratellis in pursuit. "Goonies never say die." At a 90s sleepover, someone always owned the tape.
The Nightmare Before Christmas
The stop-motion marvel Tim Burton conceived — and Henry Selick directed — where the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town kidnaps Christmas. Danny Elfman wrote the songs and sang Jack himself. Disney thought it too dark for its own label in 1993; a decade later Jack's face was a mall uniform.
The Notebook
Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, and the rain-soaked kiss that calcified into a generation's romantic ideal. Critics split; audiences swooned; the 2000s got its definitive sleepover weeper.
The Rules of Attraction
Roger Avary's savage adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's novel, following three self-destructive Camden College students through a haze of parties, drugs, and cross-wired desire. James Van Der Beek torched his wholesome Dawson's Creek image as the dealer Sean Bateman — younger brother, in Ellis's world, of American Psycho's Patrick Bateman. A box-office flop that became a cult object.
The State
MTV's 11-person sketch troupe lasted four seasons and 25 episodes but launched half the comedy you loved in the 2000s. They wrote, acted, directed, and edited everything themselves — and left behind $240 worth of pudding.
Tremors
A monster-comedy film about the residents of a tiny Nevada desert town fighting giant subterranean worm creatures called Graboids. Starring Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward alongside country star Reba McEntire, Tremors balanced scares with humor to become a beloved cult classic that spawned numerous sequels.
Twin Peaks
In April 1990, a logging town in the Pacific Northwest became the mystery the whole country was trying to solve. An FBI agent, a damn fine cup of coffee, and one question — "Who killed Laura Palmer?" Twin Peaks proved network television could be genuinely strange, elegantly cinematic, and popular all at once — at least until the answer came, and the spell broke.
Veronica Mars
Kristen Bell as a teenage private eye working her dad's cases in the corrupt seaside town of Neptune. Critically adored, barely watched, canceled in 2007 — and then its fans paid $5.7 million to bring it back.
Zoolander
Derek Zoolander is a really, really ridiculously good-looking male model who can't turn left — and his movie opened seventeen days after 9/11, to a country not in the mood. It shrugged at the box office in 2001, then cable and DVD turned Blue Steel, Mugatu, and the walk-off into quote-along canon.