10 Non-musical Films with Epic Musical Scenes

Generic conventions exist to signpost the kind of movie we are going to see and ensure we aren’t broadsided with teeny-bopper romance in our body horror or explosions and car chases in our period drama. And yet, plenty of filmmakers find subtle ways to break expectations while maintaining their film’s overarching genre.

Only a select few, however, dare sidestep into musical territory. Why? Well, it can be tough to justify everyday characters bursting into song or busting out some dance moves in the frame of an ordinary story. And yet, these 10 films manage it, with stand-out scenes specifically choreographed to songs, where characters sing, dance, and move to the music in ways real life could never replicate.

Related: 10 Movie Scenes That Really Happened without the Help of CGI

10 Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

Based on Mark Millar’s comic book series, Matthew Vaughn’s film imagines a world where a secret international spy organization known as Kingsman operates under everyone’s noses. While the film helped launch the career of Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, acting in a supporting capacity as agent Galahad, stole the show.
One scene, in particular, stands out, which sees Galahad (under the influence of a mind control device) massacre a church full of blood-thirsty crazies, timed to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s rock classic Free Bird—solo and all. Designed to look like a single take, the scene involved over 100 performers and wild zooms, pans, and tracking shots covering the action in rich, bloody detail, choreographed to the song.

While the scene’s unconventional pairing of music and violence is iconic, it was almost rather different. Vaughn originally wrote it to Guns N Roses’ “November Rain” but found when it came to shooting that the guitar solo wasn’t long enough. Thus, “Free Bird” (known for its four-minute solo) was an ideal choice. Vaughn got hold of the stems (the song’s individual audio tracks) and had his friend Charles Martin create a mix that fit the scene’s every beat.^[1]

9 Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

2024 saw the return of horror-comedy icon Beetlejuice in a long-awaited sequel, with Michael Keaton in the lead role and Tim Burton back behind the camera. And thanks to one inspired musical scene in the first film it was hard not to include one in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

In the first film, the recently dead Maitland family uses their newfound ghost powers to possess the Deetz family and their guests, creating a hysterical dinner table dance scene to “Day O (the Banana Boat song” by Harry Belafonte. However, Burton and writer Alfred Gough no longer had the Maitlands around for the sequel. So they needed a new song in which Beetlejuice himself could be the man behind the madness.

For the sequel, Beetlejuice usurps Lydia’s (Winona Ryder) stepmother’s wedding and possesses everyone, causing them to lip sync and move to Richard Harris’ original 1968 version of “MacArthur Park.” Why “MacArthur Park”? Well, Burton has it on a jukebox in his home, which he and Gough listened to while writing—and the song inspired them to write the scene as a topper to the movie’s third act.^[2]

8 The Sweetest Thing (2002)

Roger Kumble’s rom-com The Sweetest Thing is a slice of turn-of-the millennia nostalgia, starring Cameron Diaz, Selma Blair, and Christina Applegate as three friends prioritizing sex over long-term commitments. But it’s best remembered for its impromptu musical number.

The scene kicks off by referencing When Harry Met Sally’s iconic restaurant moment, with the girls gasping and feigning shock at the size of an imaginary phallus while they are out to lunch in a very public place. This moves rapidly into a restaurant-wide song and dance number (including the hand jive from Grease) to the salacious new “Penis Song,” which samples Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy.”

Deemed too racy for mainstream audiences, the scene was cut from the theatrical release, and audiences didn’t get to see it until the unrated version arrived on home media. This is all despite the fact that this scene was the most complex of the entire film, with dance training, rehearsals, and a long shoot—and this was one of the reasons that Diaz signed on in the first place.^[3]

7 Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Baz Luhrmann cannot resist a musical sequence, and even his Shakespeare adaptation doesn’t escape the director’s love of musical theatre. While the film uses the Early Modern English from the original play Romeo and Juliet, its contemporary setting and hyper-stylization allow for a few tactful deviations from the Bard.

At the beginning of the film’s second act, Romeo Montague (Leonardo DiCaprio), his kinsmen, and his best friend Mercutio (Harold Perrineau) sneak into a party at the family mansion of the Montagues’ sworn enemies, the Capulets. Dressed in drag, Mercutio leads a hallucinatory, drug-inspired rendition of Candi Staton’s “Young Hearts Run Free,” with glitter, sequins, spotlights, and dancers aplenty.

Having attended Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and spent his earlier career as a dancer, Perrineau was a natural fit for this scene. Nonetheless, dancing in platform high heels was a unique challenge he hadn’t foreseen when signing on to do Shakespeare. The actor had to draw on his ballet expertise to stay balanced and keep his form performing at height and on such fine a point.^[4]

6 This Is the End (2013)

This Is the End brought together some of America’s favorite comedy actors—Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride—to play fictionalized versions of themselves trying desperately to survive an apocalypse in L.A. Full disclosure: They don’t.

But just because most of the cast dies, that doesn’t mean the party has to end. Arriving in heaven, the gang finds themselves in the presence of ’90s pop royalty. The Backstreet Boys are waiting for them, and they break into an impromptu rendition of their hit single “Everybody.”

This wasn’t in the original script, but when Rogen (who also wrote and directed the film) wrapped the project, he felt something was missing. As he and Baruchel are massive Backstreet Boys fans, they contacted the band to perform their original and iconic dance moves on camera and cap the film with one final scene. Shot over a single day, Baruchel, Rogen and Robinson had to learn the dance moves in a super short time, but they pulled it off, and the proof is in the performance.^[5]

5 Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

A modern classic from John Hughes, the master of ’80s teen comedy, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off stars Matthew Broderick as the titular truant, who finds himself with time to spare after calling in sick to school. Ferris borrows his friend’s dad’s Ferrari and goes on a wacky adventure through Chicago while dodging the school’s dean, who is hot on his tail.

Ferris Bueller’s day goes largest of all when the main man finds himself cruising the streets on a parade float, miming to The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” while what seems to be the whole city dances and sings to his rhythm. Although it’s not unusual for John Hughes to pop a musical scene in the middle of his comedies, the scale of this one made it a unique challenge.

The scene was shot across two weekends and required armies of extras. Hughes used local radio stations to get the word out to locals to come out and fill the streets, hoping and praying people would show up. And show up they did, with 10,000 ordinary Chicagoans turning up for the shoot and joining in the dancing.^[6]

4 Southland Tales (2006)

Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly’s surreal dystopia Southland Tales is one of the most overlooked and prophetic sci-fi movies of the mid-aughts. It predicted pandemics, viral video electioneering, the kind of U.S. government surveillance uncovered by Edward Snowden, and even The Rock’s global stardom. Still, it was spurned by the general public for its dense plotlines and chaotic presentation.

But even for the casual viewer, the movie offers unexpected delights. One scene in the middle of the film sees a battle-scarred and blood-soaked Private Pilot Abilene (Justin Timberlake) trip out to The Killers’ “All These Things That I’ve Done” at the Santa Monica Pier arcade. It’s a full-length musical number with JT miming Brandon Flowers’s vocals and features choreography, chorus girls, dry ice—the lot.

Kelly was obsessed with the song at the time and cooked up a scene of Timberlake lip-synching to it while making Southland Tales. He felt the lyrics played perfectly into the Iraq War—the war that scarred the character. But Kelly had to really fight for it, begging the producers to let him shoot it before being given just four hours at the arcade to get it in the can.^[7]

3 The Big Lebowski (1998)

Few movies exemplify the Coen brothers’ style, comedic sensibilities, or filmmaking talents more than The Big Lebowski. Jeff Bridges stars as the Dude, a 40-something slacker, bowler, and White Russian connoisseur who gets embroiled in the schemes of various eccentric conmen, gangsters, and businessmen.

While the film serves up several laughs per minute from beginning to end, it plays within recognizable reality, except when the Dude gets spiked by pornographer and loan shark Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara). An unnamed cocktail of drugs takes him deep into a hallucination featuring an elaborately staged dance sequence in a magical bowling alley, set to Kenny Rogers’s “Just Dropped In.”

The scene concludes with Bridges sailing down a bowling alley between the legs of female dancers while he gazes up at their underwear. But there were more than a few surprises while filming. Bridges’s wife and daughters were on set the day he shot this part of the scene, and they pranked him with the extras and make-up people. They stuffed the dancer’s leotards with crepe hair so that when Bridges rolled under, it looked like everyone had… well, that they had gone a few days without shaving.^[8]

2 Baby Driver (2017)

Edgar Wright’s fifth feature, Baby Driver, assembled a star cast—including Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, and Kevin Spacey—for a heist movie unlike any other. The film centers around wheelman Baby (Ansel Elgort), who attempts to step away from his life of crime after one last job. As with any of Wright’s films, it features a super cool soundtrack built from the director’s own eclectic taste.

This comes to the fore in the first act, where Baby navigates a busy Atlantan street while on a coffee run for his gang. Timed to Bob & Earl’s “Harlem Shuffle,” Baby moves through a perfectly choreographed street sequence, dodging pedestrians, traffic, and other hazards and making it from the hideout to the shop and back in under three minutes.

This scene was captured on the first day of filming. Wright was meticulous about the sequencing, insisting they align every movement, extra, and scenic detail with the music—including perfectly timed crying babies and ATM beeps. After rehearsing twice, they shot the scene 28 times to get it in one unbroken take—although the final edit used take 21.^[9]

1 The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

Director Judd Apatow’s breakout comedy, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, put Steve Carell in the title role as Andy, a single man who has never had the opportunity to pop his cherry but whose workmates are intent on helping him do just that. After many misfires, embarrassments, and an unfortunate waxing, he meets the right woman (Catherine Keener’s Trish) and says goodbye to his virginity for good.

At the film’s conclusion, once Andy has had his sexual awakening, he and the cast appear in costume on a prairie and break into a rendition of “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” by The 5th Dimension. But, in a film grounded in a humdrum life and a commonplace conundrum, why the sudden divergence into surrealism?

Well, the film’s original ending left Apatow feeling something was missing: It didn’t convey how the conclusion was worth the journey. But, after talking to his pal Garry Shandling, it became obvious what was missing: they needed a way to show that this sexual encounter was elevated and extraordinary and motivated by Andy’s love. And, as they couldn’t show the sex itself, they opted for the next best thing—a song…^[10]