Amélie Poulain is born in 1974 and brought up by eccentric parents who – incorrectly believing that she has a heart defect – decide to homeschool her. To cope with her loneliness, Amélie develops an active imagination and a mischievous personality. When Amélie is six, her mother, Amandine, is killed when a suicidal Canadian tourist jumps from the roof of Notre-Dame de Paris and lands on her. As a result, her father, Raphaël, withdraws more and more from society. Amélie leaves home at the age of 18 and becomes a waitress at the Café des 2 Moulins in Montmartre, which is staffed and frequented by a collection of eccentrics. She is single and lets her imagination roam freely, finding contentment in simple pleasures like dipping her hand into grain sacks, cracking crème brûlée with a spoon, and skipping stones along the Canal Saint-Martin. On 31 August 1997, startled by the news of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, Amélie drops a plastic perfume-stopper, which dislodges a wall tile and accidentally reveals an old metal box which contains childhood memorabilia hidden by a boy who lived in her apartment decades earlier. Amélie resolves to track down the boy and return the box to him. She promises herself that if it makes him happy, she will devote her life to bringing happiness to others. After asking the apartment's concierge and several old tenants about the boy's identity, Amélie meets her reclusive neighbour, Raymond Dufayel, an artist with brittle bone disease who replicates Pierre-Auguste Renoir 's 1881 painting Luncheon of the Boating Party every year. He recalls the boy's name as "Bretodeau". Amélie finds the man, Dominique Bretodeau, and surreptitiously gives him the box. Moved to tears by the discovery and the memories it holds, Bretodeau resolves to reconcile with his estranged daughter and the grandson he has never met. Amélie happily embarks on her new mission. Amélie secretly executes complex schemes that positively affect the lives of those around her. She escorts a blind man to the Métro station while giving him a rich description of the street scenes he passes. She persuades her father to follow his dream of touring the world by stealing his garden gnome and having a flight attendant friend mail pictures of it posing with landmarks from all over the world. She starts a romance between her hypochondriacal co-worker Georgette and Joseph, a patron of the café. She convinces Madeleine Wallace, the concierge of her block of flats, that the husband who abandoned her had sent her a final conciliatory love letter just before his accidental death years before. She plays practical jokes on Collignon, the nasty greengrocer. Mentally exhausted, Collignon no longer abuses his meek, good-natured assistant Lucien. A delighted Lucien subsequently takes charge at the grocery stand. Dufayel, having observed Amélie, begins a conversation with her about his painting. Although he has copied the same Renoir painting 20 times, he has never quite captured the look of the girl drinking a glass of water. They discuss the meaning of this character, and over several conversations, Amélie begins projecting her loneliness onto the image. Dufayel recognizes this and uses the girl in the painting to push Amélie to examine her attraction to a quirky young man, Nino Quincampoix, who collects the discarded photographs of strangers from passport photo booths. When Amélie bumps into Nino a second time, she realizes she is falling in love with him. He accidentally drops a photo album in the street. Amélie retrieves it. Amélie plays a cat-and-mouse game with Nino around Paris before returning his treasured album anonymously. After arranging a meeting at the 2 Moulins, Amélie panics and tries to deny her identity. Her co-worker, Gina, concerned for Amélie's well-being, screens Nino for her; Joseph's comment about this misleads Amélie to believe she has lost Nino to Gina. It takes Dufayel's insight to give her the courage to pursue Nino, resulting in a romantic night together and the beginning of a relationship. The film ends as Amélie experiences a moment of happiness she has found for herself.

Goliath, the circus strongman and the midget, Little Professor Atom, both employed by Wilson's Wonder Circus, are accomplices of villanous businessman John Carter in taking over the circus from owner Jeff Wilson. Julie Randall, Jeff's girlfriend, performs a horse act in the circus. Jeff has hidden $10,000 in cash (equal to $ 231,459 today), which he owes to Carter, in the cage of Gibraltar the gorilla. When Jeff goes to retrieve the money to give to Carter from Gibraltar's cage on the circus train, Carter has Goliath and Atom knock Jeff unconscious and steal the $10,000. Jeff's friend and circus employee, Antonio 'Tony' Pirelli, summons attorney J. Cheever Loophole to investigate the situation. Loophole discovers Carter's moll, Peerless Pauline (whose circus act consists of walking upside-down with suction cups on her shoes), is hiding the money, but she outwits him and he fails to retrieve it. Later, Tony and Punchy search Goliath's stateroom on the circus train for the money, but are unsuccessful. With Carter about to foreclose on the circus, Loophole discovers that Jeff's aunt is the wealthy Mrs. Susanna Dukesbury, and he tricks her into paying $10,000 for the Wilson Wonder Circus to entertain the Newport 400, instead of a performance by French conductor Jardinet, and his symphony orchestra. The audience is delighted with the circus; when the blustery Jardinet arrives, Loophole, who delayed the Frenchman's arrival on the SS Normandie by implicating him in a dope ring, disposes of the conductor and his orchestra by having Tony and Punchy cut the moorings on a floating bandstand as they play the prelude to act III of Wagner's Lohengrin at the water's edge. Meanwhile, Carter and his henchmen try to burn down the circus, but are thwarted by Tony and Punchy, along with the only witness to the robbery: Gibraltar the gorilla, who also retrieves Jeff's money from Carter after a big trapeze finale, which features Tony shooting Mrs. Dukesbury out of a cannon. Loophole asks Gibraltar if the money is all there and the ape carefully counts it. The film ends with Jardinet and his orchestra still playing Wagner to the waves.

In the 22nd century, rising sea levels caused by global warming have wiped out coastal cities and altered the world's climate. With the human population in decline, advanced nations have created humanoid robots called mechas to fulfill various roles in society. In Madison, New Jersey, David, an 11-year-old prototype mecha child capable of experiencing love, is given to Monica Swinton and her husband, Henry, whose son, Martin, is in suspended animation after contracting a rare disease. Initially uncomfortable with David, Monica eventually warms to him and activates his imprinting protocol. Touched by his love for her, she introduces him to Teddy, Martin's old robotic teddy bear, and the two become friends. After Martin is unexpectedly cured of his disease and brought home, he jealously goads David into cutting off a piece of Monica's hair. That night, David enters his adoptive parents' room, but as Monica turns over, the scissors accidentally poke her in the eye. While Henry attends to her wounds, Teddy picks up the lock of hair from the floor and places it in his pocket. During a pool party, one of Martin's friends pokes David with a knife, triggering his self-protection programming. David grabs Martin, causing both of them to fall into the pool. While Martin is rescued, David is accused of endangering others. Frightful of David's reactions and fearing for his family's safety, Henry convinces Monica to return David to his creators for destruction. En route, she instead spares David by abandoning him in a forest full of scrap metal and obsolete mechas, telling him to avoid people and find solace with his own kind. Now accompanied solely by Teddy, David recalls The Adventures of Pinocchio and decides to find the Blue Fairy in the hope that she will make him a "real boy" (and therefore worthy of Monica's love). David and Teddy are captured by the "Flesh Fair", a kind of traveling circus, in which obsolete mechas are destroyed in front of jeering crowds. About to be destroyed himself, David pleads for his life. The audience revolts, allowing David to escape with Gigolo Joe, a prostitute mecha on the run after being framed for murder. David, Teddy, and Joe go to the decadent resort town of Rouge City, where "Dr. Know", a holographic answer engine, directs them to the top of Rockefeller Center in the flooded ruins of New York City. Above the ruins of New York, David meets Professor Hobby, his creator, who tells him that their meeting demonstrates David's ability to love and desire, as well as to pursue his dreams, like a human. David finds copies of himself, including female variants called "Darlene", ready to be shipped. Disheartened by his lost sense of individuality, David attempts suicide by falling from a skyscraper into the ocean. While underwater, he notices a figure resembling the Blue Fairy, before Joe rescues him in an amphibious aircraft. Before David can explain, authorities capture Joe with an electromagnet. David and Teddy take control of the aircraft to see the Blue Fairy, which turns out to be a statue from an attraction on Coney Island. The two become trapped when the Wonder Wheel falls on their vehicle. Believing that the Blue Fairy is real, David repeatedly asks the statue to turn him into a real boy until his power source is depleted. Two thousand years later, humanity is extinct and Manhattan is buried under glacial ice. Mechas have evolved into an advanced form, and a group known as the Specialists, interested in humanity, find and resurrect David and Teddy. They reconstruct the Swinton family home from David's memories before explaining, via an interactive version of the Blue Fairy, that he cannot become human. However, they recreate Monica through genetic material from the strand of hair that Teddy kept. This version of Monica can live for only one day and cannot be revived. David spends his happiest day with Monica, and as she falls asleep in the evening, Monica tells David that she has always loved him. David lies down next to her and closes his eyes as Teddy watches over them.

Jean Fournier is a quiet young bank employee in Paris, living with his widowed father. After accompanying his colleague Caron to a casino and winning at roulette, he decides to have a holiday on the French Riviera, despite his father's warning that gamblers always lose in the end. In the casino in Nice, he meets Jackie Demaistre, a middle-aged woman who has left her husband and infant son to pursue her compulsion. The two develop an emotional connection, though she warns him that she will sacrifice anything to keep on gambling, not for the money, she claims, but for the thrill. As her remaining belongings are in a suitcase at the railway station, where she plans to sleep, he offers her his hotel room. They drink, talk, and make love. Back in the casino, the two win a fortune with which, having bought a sports car and smart clothes, they take a suite in Monte Carlo and hit the tables there. Losing everything, they take the train back to Nice, where Jean convinces his father to send him some money. When this too is lost in the casino, Jean calls it a day and walks off, saying that he is returning to Paris. Hurt at this double rejection, of her and of their gambling partnership, Jackie angrily tells him to go. Shortly afterwards, she runs after him and the two embrace in the sunset.