Best Movie Karaoke Scenes

From teen-detective shows to canned mom-coms to your opinion of Dax Shephard, Kristen Bell can improve almost anything. Unfortunately, that superpower didn’t extend to this Netflix dramedy, in which she stars as a girlboss workaholic who’s dumped at the altar and ends up on her honeymoon cruise with her estranged father, Harry (Kelsey Grammer). The movie leaves many unanswered questions — Why aren’t they more grossed out by people thinking they’re married? Did anyone do a chemistry read between Bell and Grammer before greenlighting this movie? Is this just an extended ad for Royal Caribbean? — but its saving grace is the duo’s dedication to karaoke. On their first day on the ship, they find out there’s a karaoke contest on the final night, and after winning access to a private lounge in a newlyweds game (it’s icky, don’t ask) they practice their seaworthy song, Styx’s “Come Sail Away.” From choreographed moves to harmonized duetting to calling their friends onstage during a particularly long instrumental, it’s a master class in karaoke showmanship. Just maybe skip the rest of the movie. —Elisabeth Garber-Paul

Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) may be a steely, ambitious rising star at a company that fires — sorry, “downsizes” — hundreds of people a day, but even she isn’t impervious to the mercurial whims of love. After her boyfriend breaks up with her via text, she sneaks into a corporate party, dances to Young MC and, later, sings out her feelings on a boat to Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.” Pitch Perfect wouldn’t come for two more years, and the Kendrick Vocal Universe had started six years before with Camp. But for the actress in pure melancholy mode, nothing beats this one. —Jason Newman

A decade before Seth Rogen’s biblical, drug-fueled party in The Studio, he was shrooming and doing coke with Anthony Mackie and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in this stoner-comedy with warped nods to classics like It’s a Wonderful Life. As part of an annual Christmas reunion, the trio of childhood friends takes on Run-D.M.C’s “Christmas in Hollis” at a karaoke bar, complete with ugly sweaters, b-boy stances, the robot, and the Kid ’n Play Kickstep. It’s kinda corny, and it’s meant to be. We’re pretty sure. —J.N.

The following is a description of a real movie that was commercially released in theaters: Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis (sans News) are a father and daughter who meet for the first time at the funeral of Gwyn’s mom. Dad makes a living traveling the country and hustling singers at karaoke bars and competitions. Daughter decides to join him. B and C plots have great actors like Paul Giamatti, Andre Braugher, and Maria Bello, as fellow karaoke obsessives, delivering truly awful dialogue in insane storylines. Someone dies. Incredibly, that someone is not the careers of all of the people who were in this movie. Even more improbable: Paltrow and Lewis’ rendition of Smokey Robinson’s “Cruisin’” — the scene that serves as the movie’s feel-good climax — was good enough that it sat at Number One on the Billboard Adult Contemporary Chart for a week! This may not be the best karaoke movie, but it is definitely the most karaoke movie. —Maria Fontoura

The scene in Blue Velvet where Dean Stockwell performs Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” isn’t just one of the film’s spookiest, uncannily weird moments — it’s also one of the most harrowing karaoke setups in movie history. Jeffrey Beaumont, played by Kyle Buchanan, and Isabella Rosellini’s Dorothy Vallens have been taken into a secret lair by the psychopathic Frank Booth, played by Dennis Hopper. There, his partner Ben (Stockwell) begins his endlessly eerie rendition of the 1963 Orbison classic, his face lit up by a haunting glow emanating from the microphone. Everyone — including the viewer — watches along in a trance before Frank shuts off the music and startles the room back to attention by screaming, “Let’s hit the fucking road!” The whole thing adds to the terror and tension of the film, capturing David Lynch’s taste for atmospheric “what the fuck” surprises and remembered as the “karaoke from hell.” —Julyssa Lopez

Two decades before winning an Oscar, Zoe Saldaña was sidekick to Britney Spears in the pop singer’s film debut. Along with Taryn Manning, they played a trio of friends on a cross-country trip to find themselves. Of course there’s nothing quite like karaoke to break introverts — and good girls — out of their shell, and Spears’ reserved valedictorian Lucy Wagner puts the theory to the test, embracing her inner Joan Jett and belting out the anthemic “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Lucy emerges from that moment not a girl, not yet a woman, but more independent than when the threesome began their ride. —Michele Amabile Angermiller

You could say Seth MacFarlane’s movie about a fratty talking teddy bear and his Peter Pan-ish human bestie, John (Mark Wahlberg), is sophomoric and laden with jokes that haven’t aged well. You could also say it has moments that are truly, unequivocally funny. (It did, after all, spawn a sequel movie and a prequel TV series.) Ted doing karaoke at a house party he and John throw is one of those moments. Set to the 1995 Hootie and the Blowfish banger “Only Wanna Be With You,” it features Ted (voiced by MacFarlane, who also wrote and directed) mocking Nineties-style singers — that ubiquitous gutteral, baritone growl — with increasing exaggeration until his performance devolves into a caterwauling delivery of only vowels. It is unfortunately spliced with some head-scratchingly offensive MacFarlane lines, but the karaoke silliness? Chef’s kiss. —M.F.

Saltburn follows the strange psychodrama between two British students at Oxford: posh rich kid Felix (Jacob Elordi) and social-climber schlub Oliver (Barry Keoghan). Their sicko emotional power dynamic gets summed up — where else? — at a karaoke party, at Felix’s family mansion. One of his upper-crust mates selects a song for Oliver to sing: the Pet Shop Boys’ 1987 synth-pop sex-and-money classic “Rent.” But Keoghan’s face falls when he gets to the immortal hook, “I love you, you pay my rent.” “Normally, our songs are used in a film to indicate that you are in a gay club in the late Eighties,” the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant told Rolling Stone in 2024. “I’m so sick of that.” But this was different. “In Saltburn, they sing ‘Rent’ and it’s a karaoke scene, but it’s actually part of the plot. That’s very rare. The song makes such a sardonic point about his relationship with the guy in the house.” —Rob Sheffield

Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut is littered with moments of comedy gold as besties Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaityln Dever) pack four years of teenage debauchery into one night. But it’s the karaoke scene to Alanis Morrisette’s “You Oughta Know” during the final bash that takes the film to the next level. Rather than use a karaoke track, Wilde decided to shoot her shot at licensing the Nineties breakup anthem, even going as far to write a personal letter to Morrisette. “I just said how much she had meant to me in my youth and when I was in high school ― Jagged Little Pill in particular,” Wilde told HuffPost in 2019. It worked and, as luck would have it, the song was also Dever’s go-to karaoke jam. The scene kicks off with the brazen leader of the drama department, George (Noah Gelvin), deep-throating the mic, before Amy brings it home, breaking out of her timid character and embodying the kind of courage that only comes from singing in front of a room full of people. —Maya Georgi

One of the decade’s cinema du karaoke peaks was the classic mega-cheese thriller I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, the sequel to the blockbuster I Know What You Did Last Summer. Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Julie and her collegiate friends go on vacation in the Bahamas, trying to forget all about that time they ran over a pedestrian, fled the scene of the crime, then got chased by a vengeful serial killer. (As Hewitt told Rolling Stone at the time, “We joked on the set that we were going to have to rename the movie I Know What Your Breasts Did Last Summer.”) The kids relax at the karaoke lounge, where Julie belts the 1970s disco classic “I Will Survive.” Until she looks up at the lyrics on the video screen and sees a message: “I still know what you did last summer!” So… surviving? Maybe not! —R.S.

Watching Cameron Diaz croak her way through Burt Bacharach’s “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” in one of the more believable karaoke scenes of all time will make almost any amateur singer feel better about their skills. But what she doesn’t have in vocal stylings she makes up for in the most important karaoke quality: bravery. In My Best Friend’s Wedding, Diaz plays Kimberly, a 20-year-old student whose fiancé, 27-year-old Michael (Dylan Mulroney), invites his best friend, Julianne (Julia Roberts), to their wedding. Julianne decides she’s in love with Michael and tries to win him over, while also cozying up to Kimberly. It’s sociopathic behavior under the guise of love (thank goodness Rupert Everett shows up to shake sense into everyone) but the karaoke scene serves as a revealing moment for both Julianne and the audience: Kimberly may not be perfect, but she sure as hell has guts. —EGP

In the mid-1990s, critics weren’t ready to see Jim Carrey, who’d taught a generation of kids to talk with their butts in Ace Ventura, as a serious actor. Of course, that didn’t stop him. In this pitch-black comedy, Carrey plays the titular utility serviceman, Chip, who begins stalking his new friend Steven Kovacs (Matthew Broderick). Chip throws a karaoke party at Kovacs’ apartment, which quickly becomes twisted and uncomfortable when he launches into a rendition of Jefferson Starship’s “Somebody to Love,” flailing on the ground as he gives the words exaggerated vibrato. The scene is off-putting — karaoke, but make it violent — and it doesn’t help that it’s intercut with images of Kovacs hooking up with a woman he doesn’t yet know is a sex worker. But by taking director Ben Stiller’s obsession with childhood nostalgia and turning it on its creepy-doll head, The Cable Guy harnesses Carrey’s rubber-man physicality — for evil. —EGP

The karaoke scene in Bridget Jones’s Diary is brief but essential, setting up the fundamental dynamic — hapless heroine pines for dashing douchebag — that makes the film an archetype of early-aughts romantic comedies. Singing, and we use the term loosely, Badfinger’s “Without You” at her office holiday party, Renée Zellweger’s Bridget hits every note of humiliation, if not the actual notes of the song. Her Oscar-worthy 30-second performance includes slurred words, an ear-piercing range, and a lit cigarette dangling from one hand. (Miss you, 2000s.) It borders on unintelligible, but it’s clearly enough, somehow, to draw the attention of her boss and crush Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant). Not that that turns out to be such a prize. —CT Jones

If you weren’t already a little bit in love with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, watching him practically get possessed with the spirit of a rock god while performing the Pixies’ “Here Comes Your Man” in an early scene in this slightly mopey rom-com is more than enough to get you there. By the time the credits roll on 500 Days of Summer, JGL’s Tom Hansen has had his heart broken, and the movie has made plenty of declarative statements about love, manic pixie dream girls, and the connective power of indie rock. But there’s something powerful about the way the film’s depiction of a perfect co-worker karaoke night captures that bright spark of new friendship, crisp beers, sticky tables, and a mounting sense that something, or someone, is about to change your life forever. —CTJ

Bill Murray has been known to stop by karaoke rooms in real life and belt out a few impromptu numbers for startled fans, so it’s no surprise that his after-hours amateur crooning is arguably the highlight of Sofia Coppola’s moody masterpiece. Out for a night on the town in Tokyo, Murray’s movie star and Scarlett Johansson’s bored tourist end up crashing a karaoke room, where he lays into a boisterous version of “Peace, Love and Understanding” and she offers up a sultry “Brass in Pocket.” Then Murray starts singing “More Than This,” and what starts out as a slightly detached take on Roxy Music’s classic turns into a genuinely world-weary lament. You can see the characters emotionally bonding over their feelings of displacement and ennui as he sighs, “you know there’s nothing/more than this.” And for a brief moment, two lonely souls find someone else who understands what it’s like to feel truly lost. —David Fear