After a prologue (La llave) imitating an Eastern European black-and-white short film, the story is told in a retrospective way. P. Tinto was born obsessed with building a big family and soon enlists a blind girl, Olivia, in his big life project. However, despite his best intentions, the couple is unable to have kids due to their incompetence to understand the sexual innuendo of the adults and they spent the most of their lifes trying to have kids just by pulling the suspenders in and out and singing "tralari, tralari". After several years without having any kid, the now elder couple decide to pray for a miracle and that same night a couple of Martians ends up stranded in their door. P. Tinto, thinking they are children due to their short stature, decides to adopt them and treat them as kids, despite their protests and their adult behavior. Some time later, while watching a video reel about a big family favoured by the government and the need to adopt African orphans, P. Tinto decides to adopt one, but his adoption form goes flying to the hands of Pancho Jose, a man that just escaped from a Polish madhouse and armed with a big butane cylinder. Along with him, a nationalist contractor called Usillos that was giving him a ride, has his car broken in front of the Tinto´s house. Mistaken as an African orphan, Pancho is adopted by the couple, while Usillos is contracted by P. Tinto to rebuild his library to adapt it as a new room for Pancho, Usillos accepts the job after learning that an UFO machine is hidden in the house. Pancho Jose bonds with the Martians after learning that the UFO is also a time machine and he decides to help them to fix it so he can come back in time to save his mother from being crushed by a big box of cheese and prevent a sad chain of events to happen in his life. However, P. Tinto has another plans for Pancho when he learns the contract with the factory´s biggest client, The Vatican, is about to be cancelled, and tries to lure Panchito into the business. While Panchito tries to propose a new product (pizza) for the business, P. Tinto gets angry and locks his son in the attic, where he learns that the UFO got broken during a test run in a weird accident. P. Tinto decides to use his son´s idea, but is quickly rejected by the priest of the town that decides to lure any of the "kids" to the church, enlisting Jose Ramon, one of the Martians, in the process. Ramon, enlightened by faith, decides to become a priest and leave behind the idea to come back to Mars. Meanwhile, Pancho Jose seduces Olivia (that complained a lot about a pain in her low stomach) and the woman dances the next morning in a burst of happiness just to be run over by a train. Pancho Jose, frustrated over the outcome of the last events, decides to rebuild the time machine using Usillo´s truck. Usillos, having enough information about the UFO, reports is to the NASA, but when the investigators arrive, they took Usillos instead, as they find him dressing with his UFO gadgets, his thumb incredibly swollen and completely crazy. Pancho Jose manages to complete the machine and says goodbye to P. Tinto. He leaves with the other Martian, just to reveal that he wasn´t alone bringing with him a midget friend from the madhouse he brought in his luggage that turned also to be a Martian. They came back to time to save Pancho´s mother and reunite her with his past self. This leads to a sequence of changes in the time lapse, reverting the death of Olivia and leading an African orphan to find the house of P. Tinto that is on the roof waiting for a miracle. In a mid-credits scene, it is revealed that the stranded Martian was found in the road and, while he insisted that he is an alien, is again mistaken as a kid and adopted by a big family along with another African orphan. At the end of the credits, we see Olivia running happily in the meadows.

Navin Johnson, a homeless person sleeping in a stairwell in Los Angeles, addresses the camera directly to tell his life story. The white adopted son of black sharecroppers in Mississippi, Navin grows to adulthood naïvely unaware of these circumstances. He is unable to dance in rhythm to the spirited folk songs played by the family, but finds that he can do so perfectly to a champagne-style song on the radio. Seeing this moment as a calling, he excitedly decides to leave home and travel to St. Louis, where the broadcast originated. Along the way, he adopts a dog and names it "Shithead" after angering the guests at a motel by waking them up in the middle of the night, having misinterpreted the dog's barking at his door as a warning of a fire. Navin finds a job as a gas station attendant, where he attempts to detain some thieves but accidentally destroys a nearby church. Later, a madman chooses his name at random from the telephone book and decides to kill him. As the gunman waits for an opportunity, Navin solders a brace to a customer's eyeglasses to stop them from slipping down his nose. The customer, Stan Fox, is an inventor who promises to try to market the device and split any profits with Navin. The gunman opens fire at Navin but misses, and Navin flees to the grounds of a traveling carnival. Navin is hired as a weight guesser and is brusquely seduced by Patty Bernstein, an intimidating daredevil motorcyclist. Later, while operating a miniature railway, he meets a cosmetologist named Marie Kimble and arranges a date with her. When a jealous Patty interrupts and starts to beat Navin, Marie easily knocks her unconscious. The two begin a relationship, and Navin decides to ask Marie to marry him. Before he can do so, though, she leaves him because he cannot provide financial security. Devastated, Navin takes Shithead and travels to Los Angeles. There, the gunman who tried to kill him—now sane and working as a private investigator —tracks him down and gives him a letter from Stan requesting a meeting. Stan has been able to market Navin's device, now branded as the Opti-Grab, and gives him a check for $250,000 as the first installment on his share of the profits. Navin finds and marries Marie, and the two adopt a life of extravagant spending as his wealth continues to grow. However, Navin is soon named as defendant in a class action lawsuit brought by director Carl Reiner and millions of other Opti-Grab customers who have become permanently cross-eyed after using the device. Navin loses the suit and is ordered to pay $10 million in damages, leaving him broke, and he storms out into the street after an argument with Marie. Having finished his story, Navin resigns himself to living in poverty, only to be found by his adoptive family, who have brought Marie and Shithead with them. The family has become wealthy by investing the money Navin sent them from time to time, and they take him and Marie home to live in their new house, which is nearly identical to their old shack but larger and sturdier. Once again Navin dances on the porch to folk songs, this time with perfect rhythm.

Destitute alcoholic Henry Chinaski lives in a Los Angeles rundown apartment and works menial jobs when he can find them. He also writes poetry and short stories which he submits to magazines and papers for little money. Henry frequents The Golden Horn, a bar where he drinks, hangs out with other alcoholics, and gets into altercations with the bartender he hates, Eddie. One night, Henry gets into a fight with Eddie and loses. To gain energy and win the next fight, he takes a sandwich from a patron and eats it, disgusting the patron and angering the bar owner, Jim, one of Henry's best friends. Jim tells Henry to go lie down in his apartment. After an afternoon nap, Henry steals food from another apartment to eat in preparation to fight Eddie. Henry then returns to The Golden Horn and antagonizes Eddie until the latter challenges him to another fight, which Henry wins. Henry then staggers on to the Kenmore, a nearby establishment where he continues his imbibement. There, he meets Wanda, an alcoholic and a kept woman. Wanda is initially annoyed with Henry, saying that she "hates people," but ends up being intrigued by him. The two buy liquor at a nearby store, and Wanda steals corn from a cornfield, attracting the attention of the police. The two run to her apartment, evading them. Wanda boils the corn but discovers it is green and inedible and freaks out, saying that nothing in her life ever works out. Henry comforts her. However, things become acrimonious between Henry and Wanda when Henry discovers that Wanda has slept with Eddie. After he chastises her for it, Wanda beats Henry with her purse, knocking him unconscious. Later, a detective following Henry sees him covered in blood and calls 911. Two paramedics arrive and are unfazed by Henry's being covered in blood, telling him not to waste their time. Wanda returns later, and the two apologize to one another. That night, Wanda claims to be dying in bed, seeing angels. Henry calls 911 and the same paramedics arrive, much to his surprise, and claim Wanda is just drunk and "too fat." After Wanda leaves to look for a job the next morning, Henry is tracked down by Tully Sorenson, a wealthy book publisher who has been impressed with his writing and is interested in publishing some of his work. She finds him through the detective she has hired. Knowing Henry is destitute, Tully pays him an "advance" of $500. Henry then breaks into another apartment after hearing a man abusing his wife. After the man threatens to cut his wife's throat, he and Henry get into an altercation which results in the man being stabbed. Henry scrambles out of the apartment building and goes for a drive in L.A. with Tully. At one point, he rams a car where a man and woman are making out while the light is green. Tully says he was immature and reckless in his response. She then takes him back to her home where, after drinks, the two have sex. At first, Henry is impressed with the promise of wealth and security, including an endless supply of booze that working for Tully could provide. However, he begins to realize that he is uncomfortable being involved with Tully, romantically or professionally, because of class differences, saying that she is "trapped in a cage with golden bars". Henry determines he must leave. He and Wanda go to the Golden Horn, where Henry requests a round on him for the entire bar. To Eddie's surprise, Henry pays with some of the advance he received from Tully and sarcastically leaves a tip for Eddie, saying "Buy a drink on me." Tully heads out to see if she can change his mind and finds him at the bar where a drunken, jealous Wanda proceeds to beat her up. When Henry does not intercede, Tully realizes that Henry does not care about her and does not want her help. So she leaves the bar and gives up on publishing his work. Eddie calls Henry out, and they go out behind the bar for another fight. Henry and the other barflies follow Eddie out the door, the fight starts, and the crowd cheers the two men.

The President of the United States is caught making advances on an underage girl inside the Oval Office less than two weeks before the election. Conrad Brean, a top spin doctor, is brought in by presidential aide Winifred Ames to take the public's attention away from the scandal. He decides to construct a fictional war in Albania, hoping that the media will concentrate on this instead. Brean contacts Hollywood producer Stanley Motss to create the war, complete with a theme song and fake film footage of a fleeing orphan to arouse sympathy. The hoax is initially successful, with the president quickly gaining ground in the polls. When the CIA learns of the plot, it sends Agent Charles Young to confront Brean about the hoax. Brean convinces Young that revealing the deception is against his and the CIA's best interests. But when the CIA, in collusion with the president's rival candidate Senator John Neal, reports that the war has ended, the media begins to revert its focus to the president's sexual misconduct scandal. To counter this, Motss invents a hero who was left behind enemy lines in Albania. Inspired by the idea that he was "discarded like an old shoe", Brean and Motss ask the Pentagon to provide a special forces soldier with a matching name (a sergeant named William Schumann is identified), around whom a POW narrative can be constructed. As part of the hoax, folk singer Johnny Dean records a song called "Old Shoe", which is pressed onto a 78-rpm record, prematurely aged so that listeners will think that it was recorded years earlier and sent to the Library of Congress to be "found". Bream and Motss fling pairs of old shoes into a tree outside of the White House grounds. Soon, large numbers of shoes begin appearing on phone and power lines and a grassroots movement to bring home Schumann takes hold, completing a successful astroturfing. When the team goes to retrieve Schumann, they discover that he is actually a criminally insane Army convict. On the return to Andrews Air Force Base, their plane crashes. The team survives and is rescued by a farmer, an illegal alien. However, Schumann is killed when he attempts to rape a gas station owner's daughter. Seizing the opportunity, Motss stages an elaborate military funeral for Schumann, claiming that he died from wounds sustained during his rescue and the farmer receives expedited citizenship for a better story. As the President rallies toward re-election, Motss becomes frustrated that the media are crediting his upsurge in the polls to the bland campaign slogan, "Don't change horses in mid-stream", rather than to Motss's hard work. Despite Brean's offer of an ambassadorship and the dire warning that he is "playing with his life", Motss demands that he receive credit for his production and he threatens to reveal his involvement unless he gets it. Realizing that he has no choice, Brean orders his security staff to kill him. A newscast reports that Motss has died of a heart attack at home, the president has been successfully re-elected and an Albanian terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for a recent bombing, suggesting that the fake war is becoming real.

The film begins with an interview of the older Roger Sharpe, with flashbacks to 1971.

A provocative question at a dinner party leads to a barrage of reproaches and insults.

In the 1890s, a group of "Harvey Girls"—new waitresses for Fred Harvey 's pioneering chain of Harvey House restaurants—travels on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to the town of Sandrock, New Mexico. On the trip, they meet Susan Bradley, who is traveling from Ohio to Sandrock to marry a man named H. H. Hartsey, whose beautiful love letters she received when she answered a "lonely-hearts" ad. Upon arrival, Susan is dismayed to find that Hartsey is a "mangy old buzzard" who does not at all meet her expectations. As Hartsey senses Susan's disappointment, the two eventually agree that they are mismatched and call off the wedding. Hartsey then reveals to Susan that his letters were actually written as a joke by Ned Trent, co-owner of the Alhambra Saloon, prompting Susan to confront Ned. Smitten with Susan, Ned offers to pay for her trip back to Ohio, but she instead vows to run him and his saloon out of town. Susan joins the Harvey Girls, and on the Harvey House's opening night, Ned visits the restaurant and orders a rare steak. Realizing that the meat has disappeared, Susan marches over to the Alhambra with two six-shooters, recovers the stolen meat and serves Ned a raw steak. Later that night, after someone shoots at a lamp in the Harvey Girls' dormitory, most of the women want to flee, but Susan and other waitresses decide to stay, unaware that Ned's business associate, Judge Sam Purvis, is determined to close the Harvey House in order to maintain his own thriving business running the Alhambra in town. The next day, Ned confronts Purvis about the shooting and demands that he apologize to the Harvey Girls. Instead, Purvis lies to Susan and another waitress, Deborah Andrews, claiming that Ned is not pleased to have the Harvey House in town. Determined to find the culprit behind the shooting, Susan seeks out Ned at the Alhambra and is confronted by Em, Ned's lead saloon singer who is in love with him; she reveals to Susan that it is actually Purvis, not Ned, who wants to run the Harvey House out of town. Susan later finds Ned alone in a remote valley, and as they discuss love letters and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 's poem The Courtship of Miles Standish, they kiss. Returning to town, they find Deborah trapped in the Harvey Girls' closet with a rattlesnake, which Ned shoots dead. Susan accuses Ned of placing the snake in their closet, prompting him to leave. Ned then tells Purvis to stop harassing the Harvey Girls. Some time later, Ned informs Susan that the Alhambra will be relocated to Flagstaff, Arizona, the next morning, and she cries as they say goodbye. Later that night, when Purvis and his henchmen set fire to the Harvey House, Ned fights them off, but the restaurant burns down. The next morning, Ned offers the Alhambra as a replacement for the Harvey House. Just before Em boards the train to Flagstaff, Ned tells her he is staying in Sandrock. Susan, thinking that Ned too is leaving, boards the same train and is spotted by Em. Realizing that Susan loves Ned so much that she is willing to become a saloon girl to be with him, Em pulls the emergency brake and points out Ned, riding toward the train on his horse. Ultimately, they wed in the desert, surrounded by the Harvey Girls.

High school senior Walter "Gib" Gibson and best friend Lance celebrate moving on to college, though Gib mostly laments having lost his touch with girls. Lance heads to UCLA while Gib attends an Ivy League college in New England. The two friends regularly communicate with Gib saying his luck with girls is unchanged. Gib attempts to woo the ambitious, regimented Alison Bradbury, his English classmate by tricking her into tutoring him. His clumsy seduction angers her. Lance invites Gib to come to California for Christmas break, saying he can set him up with a beautiful girl, claiming she is a "sure thing" with no strings attached. Gib arranges a cross-country ride share with Gary and Mary Ann only to discover that Alison is also a passenger. She is headed to UCLA to visit her boyfriend, Jason. The tension and bickering between Gib and Alison become too much for Gary and Mary Ann, and they abandon the two roadside in the middle of nowhere, infuriating Alison. Alison hitches a ride from a middle-aged man driving a pick-up truck. When he attempts to sexually assault her, Gib, who hid in the truck bed, quickly intervenes. The two decide to stick together, eventually making it to a bus station. However, Gib lacks enough money for the fare, so the two instead check into a motel. While Alison is talking to Jason on the phone, Gib leaves and ventures to a nearby bar. He spends his remaining cash on drinks and drunkenly sings Christmas carols with the locals. The next morning, Gib has Allison stuff her shirt with scarves to appear pregnant, hoping it increases their chances of getting a ride. The two hitchhike to a restaurant, whereupon Alison realizes she left her appointment book and cash back at the motel. That night, the two are caught outside in a rainstorm, until Alison suddenly remembers she has her father's emergency credit card. The two stay at an upscale hotel, where they treat themselves to drinks and dinner. The next morning, Alison is pleased to find Gib embracing her, but he quickly pulls away upon waking up. While hitchhiking with a truck driver through Arizona, Alison overhears Gib saying that he is on his way to meet a "sure thing". Upon arriving at the UCLA campus, Alison angrily parts ways with Gib. That night, Gib attends a Christmas mixer where Lance introduces Gib to the "sure thing" girl. Meanwhile, Alison is bored staying in Jason's dormitory and drags him to the same party. Alison and Gib see each other, but their mutual jealousy leads to a confrontation. Gib takes the "sure thing" to Lance's room but he can only think about Alison. In Jason's dormitory, Alison tells him about Gib. He asks if she loves Gib and it is implied that she does. Back on campus after Christmas break, Gib tries making amends with Alison, but she ignores him, angry about the party and believing Gib slept with the “sure thing.” In English class, Professor Taub reads Gib's essay, which describes his night with the "sure thing". The girl in the essay asks the protagonist if he loves her, but for the first time he realizes that those are not just words, and he cannot sleep with her. Alison realizes what actually happened that night and tells Gib that she and Jason broke up. The two reconcile and kiss.