The Friends

Stand by Me meets The Secret Garden. Three boys befriend an eccentric old man and restore his overgrown garden. Gentle coming-of-age tale carries the film.

Streaming availability changes weekly. Check the Where to watch panel above — we re-pull TMDB's JustWatch index every week. If nothing's listed, the film is between licence windows.

Our similarity graph picks 6 films based on shared director, keywords, mood-cluster overlap, and MovieLens user co-rating — niche-biased away from blockbusters. Full list: /like/the-friends-1994/.

Shinji Sōmai directed The Friends in 1994. See Shinji Sōmai's full filmography, where to start with Shinji Sōmai, or where to go after you've seen everything by Shinji Sōmai.

The Friends was released in 1994 (JA original-language production), with a runtime of 113 minutes.