The best Labor Day movies to stream are Jaws, Grease, Dirty Dancing, Top Gun, The Sandlot, National Lampoon’s Vacation and A League of Their Own. All seven are easy to find on streaming or rental, and every one treats the end of summer like an event instead of a deadline.
Updated November 3, 2026.
I rewatch a stretch of these every year when summer starts to wind down. The best Labor Day movies barely mention the holiday. They’re about a summer running out: the last night at the resort, the last game on the sandlot, the last day at the beach before the shark shows up.
Labor Day weekend is the last real excuse of the year to do nothing on purpose, and most of us try to squeeze one more lazy day out of summer before school and work take over. This is a fun list, built for popcorn and a full couch. Sometimes the best way to close out summer is to watch a shark terrorize a beach town or a bunch of kids chase a baseball into a junkyard, and let that be the whole plan. If you want something heavier for the long weekend, try our picks of essential American movies from the Criterion Collection.
Jaws (1975)
Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was budgeted at $3.5 million and ended up costing about $9 million. The mechanical sharks, nicknamed Bruce, broke down so often that Spielberg shot around them. He used point-of-view shots and John Williams’ two-note score instead, and the movie got scarier for it. It’s still the best argument for why a monster you barely see is scarier than one you see in full.
It took $470 million worldwide in its 1970s releases and was the highest-grossing film ever until Star Wars passed it two years later. It won three Oscars, for film editing, sound and Williams’ score, and lost Best Picture to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s the movie that made the summer blockbuster, which is why it still ranks among the top summer blockbusters of all time.
Grease (1978)
Grease opens on a summer romance and spends the rest of the movie trying to get it back. Few movies capture the giddy, nostalgic rush of a summer ending quite like it. It cost $6 million and has grossed about $396 million worldwide. It beat The Sound of Music as the top-grossing musical and stayed the biggest live-action musical until Les Misérables passed it in 2012.
The soundtrack was the second-best-selling album of 1978 in the U.S., behind only Saturday Night Fever. John Travolta was 23 during the summer 1977 shoot, and Olivia Newton-John was 28. They played high schoolers with a wink, and nobody in the audience seemed to mind that they looked older than high school seniors.
Dirty Dancing (1987)
Dirty Dancing is set in the summer of 1963 at a Catskills resort, and it builds to the end-of-season show. That makes it about as close to a true Labor Day movie as this list gets. It was made for about $5 million and grossed $214 million worldwide, including $64 million in the U.S. and Canada.
“(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” won Best Original Song at the 1988 Oscars. It was also the first film to sell a million copies on home video. Here’s a good bit of trivia for the couch: Jennifer Grey has said the big final lift was never rehearsed and was done only on the day they shot it.
Anyone who has tried a fancy dance move in the living room knows it looks a lot easier than it is. That makes the final lift even more fun to watch.
Top Gun (1986)
Top Gun cost about $15 million and was the highest-grossing film of 1986, with $176.8 million in the U.S. and Canada in its first run. Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” and Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” both became radio staples, and the second one won the Oscar for Best Original Song. The mix of dogfights and beach volleyball is one of the most purely fun two-hour packages the eighties turned out. Pair it with the 2022 sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, and you’ve filled a whole evening.
The Navy had a say in the script. It moved the opening dogfight away from Cuba into international waters and cut a crash on a carrier deck. In return, it lent real F-14 Tomcats and carrier access. The Navy also set up recruiting booths in some theaters. You’ll often read that applications to become naval aviators jumped 500 percent, but later studies put the overall jump in enlistment closer to 8 percent.
The Sandlot (1993)
The Sandlot follows a scrappy group of kids through one perfect, sunburned summer of baseball that ends just as school comes back. It was made for $7 million and grossed just over $34 million worldwide in theaters. That undersold it badly. Once it hit VHS and DVD it became a cult favorite, and home video sales are estimated at $76 million.
“You’re killing me, Smalls!” has become such a part of everyday speech that it barely feels like a movie quote anymore. The chase with The Beast at the end is still one of the tensest scenes a kids’ baseball movie has ever pulled off.
Most of us remember at least one summer that felt like it would never end, until it did. This movie nails that feeling better than almost any other.
National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)
Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold drags his family cross-country to Walley World in a station wagon that seems determined to wreck the whole trip. National Lampoon’s Vacation grossed $61.4 million in the U.S. and led to five more films: European Vacation, Christmas Vacation, Vegas Vacation, Christmas Vacation 2 and the 2015 Vacation.
John Hughes wrote the original short story, “Vacation ’58,” during the 1979 Chicago blizzard for National Lampoon magazine. In his story the family was headed to Disneyland. The producers swapped in Walley World to avoid legal trouble. It belongs on any list of the best comedy films of all time, and every family road-trip comedy since has borrowed from it.
Anyone who has survived a long family car ride knows the back seat can turn into a war zone by hour three. That’s why the Griswolds still feel so familiar.
A League of Their Own (1992)
Penny Marshall’s A League of Their Own cost $40 million and earned $107.5 million in the U.S. and Canada, a strong result for a period baseball movie led by women. Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Rosie O’Donnell and Madonna keep every storyline moving. Hanks’ “There’s no crying in baseball!” has outlived most quotes from its era. It’s one of those rare sports movies that people love even if they’ve never sat through a full inning of baseball.
The league was real, and it was a story many people had forgotten. It got going while so many men were overseas in World War II. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League ran from 1943 to 1954, and more than 600 women played in it. For the Cooperstown scenes at the end, 65 of the original players appeared on camera.
Labor Day Movies: Common Questions
What is the highest-grossing movie on this list?
Jaws is the biggest, with about $495 million worldwide across all its releases on a budget of about $9 million. It was the highest-grossing film ever made until Star Wars passed it two years later. Grease is second here, at about $396 million worldwide.
Which Labor Day movie won the most Academy Awards?
Jaws won three Oscars: film editing, sound and John Williams’ score. Dirty Dancing and Top Gun each won one, both for Best Original Song. Grease, The Sandlot, Vacation and A League of Their Own didn’t win any. That leaves Jaws with more Oscars than the other six combined.
Did any of these movies get a sequel or remake?
Every one of them did. Vacation led to five more films, and Jaws had three sequels. Grease 2 came out in 1982, and Top Gun: Maverick arrived in 2022. The Sandlot got two direct-to-video sequels, and Dirty Dancing got a 2004 prequel and a 2017 TV remake. A League of Their Own became TV series in 1993 and 2022.
Where can I stream these Labor Day movies?
All seven move around between streaming services and digital rental stores, and the lineup changes from month to month. Before the weekend, look each title up on a free guide like JustWatch. It shows which service has it right now, so you don’t pay to rent a movie you already get with a subscription.