Particle physicists and estranged friends Abby Yates and Erin Gilbert co-authored Ghosts from Our Past, a book detailing their paranormal investigations since high school. Erin later disavowed the work, while Abby continues her research at the Kenneth P. Higgins Institute of Science in Manhattan, with engineering physicist Jillian "Holtz" Holtzmann as her partner. Now a professor at Columbia University and in line for tenure, Erin, discovering that Abby republished their book, convinces her to cease its publication if she helps Abby and Holtzmann investigate a haunting at the Aldridge Mansion. They encounter the malevolent ghost of the family’s eldest daughter before she escapes, restoring Erin's belief in the supernatural and friendship with Abby. Erin loses her bid for tenure at Columbia after their vlog becomes viral. Erin offers to join Abby and Holtzmann as the latter are dismissed from Higgins Institute. After stealing equipment, they establish temporary headquarters above a disused Chinese restaurant. They verbosely name themselves "Conductors of the Metaphysical Examination", build trappings and hire jock Kevin Beckman as a receptionist. MTA staffer Patty Tolan encounters a ghost in a subway terminal built under a former prison and contacts the team. They find the ghost and test Holtzmann's prototype proton packs on the entity, but fail to capture it. They advertise their services with a "no ghosts allowed" logo that Holtzmann had based on a graffiti artist's defacement and the name pundits have labeled them "Ghostbusters". Patty joins the team, providing city expertise, PPE and a repurposed hearse from her uncle dubbed " Ecto-1 ". Mad scientist and occultist Rowan North has triggered supernatural events by attracting ghosts across Manhattan with self-developed ionizers modeled after the Ghostbusters' technology, allowing him to experiment and create a dimensional vortex powered by turned PSI energy. When Rowan plants another device at a music festival, the Ghostbusters are called and capture a demonic ghost there, becoming city sensations but antagonizing him. When debunker Doctor Martin Heiss challenges the quartet, Erin releases the ghost as evidence; it throws him out of a window and escapes. The group is brought before Mayor Bradley and his deputy, Jennifer Lynch, who reveal that they and the DHS are aware of the city's supernatural activities. While privately acknowledging the team's work, they publicly denounce them as fraudsters. The Ghostbusters realizes Rowan is planting his devices along ley lines, with their alignments intersecting at the Mercado Hotel in Times Square, a site of violent occurrences where Rowan's vortex will breach the netherworld, potentially triggering an apocalypse. When they confront him in the building's basement, Abby warns him of apprehension, but unwilling to turn himself in, Rowan electrocutes himself with his main machine. After deactivating it, Holtzmann finds an annotated copy of Ghosts from Our Past that explains the similarity between their technologies. Erin later discovers that Rowan planned his suicide to become a ghost himself. Rowan returns as a deity-like ghost and attacks the Ghostbusters at their headquarters by possessing Abby, but Patty thwarts him. He then possesses Kevin, escapes to the hotel, opens the portal and releases galvanized ghosts. Rowan subdues the authorities, but the Ghostbusters fight through his army to reach the portal. After leaving Kevin's body, Rowan takes on a kaiju -sized form based on the ghost in the Ghostbusters' logo and becomes rampant. The team uses the Ecto-1's nuclear reactor to incite a nuclear explosion inside the vortex; it reverses the portal, forcing Rowan and the ghosts back in and saving the city. Rowan attempts to take Abby with him, but Erin leaps into the portal and rescues her. Despite the city's fascination with the supernatural and its lauding of the Ghostbusters as heroes, the mayor continues to denounce them publicly while covertly funding their operations. With added resources, the Ghostbusters move to a disused firehouse, where they build more equipment, including an ecto-containment system. While investigating EVP, Patty hears the word " Zuul ".

The film is a farce about a mentally unstable advertising executive, Denis Dimbleby Bagley (played by Grant), who suffers a nervous breakdown while making an advert for pimple cream. Rachel Ward plays his long-suffering but sympathetic wife, Julia Bagley. Richard Wilson plays John Bristol, Bagley's boss. Bagley has a crisis of conscience about the ethics of advertising, which leads to mania. He then develops a boil on his right shoulder that comes to life with a face and voice. The voice of the boil, although uncredited, is that of Bruce Robinson. The boil takes a cynical and unscrupulous view of the advertising profession in contrast to Bagley's new-found ethical concerns. Eventually, Bagley decides to have the boil removed in hospital, but moments before he is taken into the operating room, the boil quickly grows into a replica of Bagley's head (only with a moustache) and covers Bagley's original head, asking doctors to lance it, which is done since nobody has noticed the switch from left to right nor the new moustache. Bagley, now with the boil head, moustache, and personality (the movie's third personification from Grant after the stressed executive and the raving lunatic) returns home to celebrate his wedding anniversary, with the original head merely resembling a boil on his left shoulder. The "boil" eventually withers but doesn't die, yet Bagley resumes his advertising career rejuvenated and ruthless, although without his wife, who decides to leave his new cruel persona.

In late 1941, during World War II, the United Kingdom struggles to halt Nazi Germany 's attempts to take over Europe, with London regularly bombed by the Luftwaffe and supply and aid ships constantly sunk by German submarines. Brigadier Colin Gubbins initiates Operation Postmaster, a covert sabotage mission to disrupt U-boat resupply operations on Spanish-controlled Fernando Po. SOE agents Marjorie Stewart and Richard Heron depart by train while Gubbins enlists Gus March-Phillipps to assemble a ground team to destroy the Italian supply ship Duchessa d'Aosta and two tugboats. Gus and his allies Henry Hayes, Freddy Alvarez, and Danish Army officer Anders Lassen sail to Fernando Po on the neutral Swedish fishing trawler Maid of Honor. They divert to a German-controlled section of La Palma to rescue SOE saboteur Geoffrey Appleyard from the Gestapo. Gubbins had sent Appleyard ahead hoping Gus would want him on the team. Marjorie and Heron use an 'illegal' gambling hall on Fernando Po to recruit backup for Gus's team. Marjorie seduces Heinrich Luhr, the SS commander in charge. Learning that the Duchessa intends to depart three days early, Gus sails through a British naval blockade of Nazi-occupied West Africa knowing they'll be arrested if their unauthorised mission is discovered. Marjorie and Heron learn that Luhr has had the Duchessa's hull reinforced despite the Italian attache's reservations. Gus and Appleyard decide their best course of action is to hijack the ships and use them for barter after a mole in Gubbins's staff reveals the mission to senior command. Luhr catches on when Marjorie's act begins to 'slip' but the raid is successful, and Marjorie shoots Luhr in the head. Delivering the boats to a British fleet outside Lagos, the team is arrested. They are spared court-martial when Winston Churchill adds them to his 'Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare'. A montage before the end credits reveal the later activities of several protagonists: Gus became a war hero helming similar raids and married Marjorie at the start of her acting career; Appleyard received commendations for his role in the mission, much to the king's amusement; Hayes became an accomplished spy notable for surviving a year of Nazi torture; Lassen took part in raids outside the group until his death in 1945; Ian Fleming, part of Gubbins's inner circle, used Operation Postmaster as inspiration for his James Bond novels.

In 1903, American seaman Henry Adams is stranded penniless in Britain and gets caught up in an unusual wager between two wealthy, eccentric brothers, Oliver and Roderick Montpelier. They persuade the Bank of England to issue a one million pound banknote, which they present to Adams in an envelope, only telling him that it contains some money. Oliver asserts that the mere existence of the note will enable the possessor to obtain whatever he needs, while Roderick insists that it would have to be spent for it to be of any use. Once Adams gets over the shock of discovering how much the note is worth, he tries to return it to the brothers, but is told that they have left for a month. He then finds a letter in the envelope, explaining the wager and promising him a job if he can avoid spending the note for the month. At first, everything goes as Oliver had predicted. Adams is mistaken for an eccentric millionaire and has no trouble getting food, clothes, and a hotel suite on credit, just by showing his note. The story of the note is reported in the newspapers. Adams is welcomed into exclusive social circles, meeting the American ambassador and English aristocracy. He becomes very friendly with Portia Lansdowne, the niece of the Duchess of Cromarty. Then fellow American Lloyd Hastings asks him to back a business venture. Hastings tells Adams that he does not have to put up any money himself; the mere association will allow Hastings to raise the money that he needs to develop his gold mine by selling shares. Trouble arises when the Duke of Frognal, who had been unceremoniously evicted from the suite Adams now occupies, hides the note as a joke. When Adams is unable to produce the note, panic breaks out amongst the shareholders and Adams's creditors. All is straightened out in the end, and Adams is able to return the note to the Montpelier brothers at the end of the month.

During the WWII American occupation of Italy, American GIs are quartered in the homes of town residents in the village of San Forino, and recently orphaned Carla "Campbell" quarters at her small home one airman at a time. The 16-year old Carla seeks comfort and sleeps with each of the three American GIs quartered alone with her in the course of 10 days: Cpl. Phil Newman, Lt. Justin Young, and Sgt. Walter Braddock. After each, in turn, moves on, Carla discovers herself pregnant. Uncertain of which is the father, Carla writes to each of the three, who are unaware of the existence of the other two, to support "his" daughter, Gia, with monthly financial payments. Over the next 20 years, Carla shrewdly invests the funds, buying a wine vineyard that she runs with the help of her handsome manager, Vittorio, and in time sends Gia to an American boarding school in Switzerland. To protect her reputation, as well as the reputation of her child, Carla has raised the girl to believe her mother is the widow of a nonexistent army captain named Eddie Campbell, a name she borrowed from a can of soup (otherwise he would have been Captain Coca-Cola, the only other term in English she knew at the time). As the widow of Captain Campbell, Carla gains social prominence in the community that would have shunned her as an unwed mother. The only individual in the community who does not pay her deference is the Contessa, a social rival. Twenty years after the end of World War II, the three ex-airmen who quartered with Carla attend a unit-wide reunion of the 293rd Squadron of the 15th Air Force in the village where they were stationed. The men are accompanied by their wives, and in the Newmans' case, three obnoxious children. Carla is forced into a series of comic situations as she tries to keep the "three fathers"—each one anxious to meet his daughter Gia for the first time—from discovering her secret. At the same time, Carla strives to convince Gia not to run off to Paris to be with a much older married man who will take her to Brazil. Vittorio, Carla's long-time companion, also must adjust to the unraveling situation, setting aside his ego to emotionally support Carla and Gia through the crisis. Meanwhile, Gia is anxious to learn more from the veterans at the reunion about her nonexistent father, Captain Eddie Campbell, while Carla tries to assure her that people's memories are short. The wives of Newman, Young, and Braddock meet Carla and Gia at the local beauty parlor. Moved by Gia's account of her father's connection to the squadron, they advocate for a memorial chapel to be named after the gallant Capt. Campbell. Eventually the "three fathers" and their wives stumble on the truth when Carla's housekeeper inadvertently informs them, mistakenly assuming that the three men who come to see Carla together have learned the truth. When confronted, Mrs. Campbell admits she does not know which of the three men is Gia's father. She challenges the men by asking them what kind of father each would have been, particularly because they have never been there for all the small but important life events of their daughter. Provoked by this, the potential fathers talk to Gia and insist that she cannot run off. Vittorio also helps Gia understand her mother's motivations for deception to protect her child and herself. At the town's dedication ceremony for the chapel, Carla says that Eddie Campbell would have been too humble to accept the honor and insists that her social rival, the Contessa, accept the dedication of the chapel in the name of the people of San Fiorino. The "fathers" cease the support payments, and the Braddocks, who cannot have children of their own, agree to have Gia stay with them while she attends college in the US. Vittorio stays on with Carla after she convinces him that he will be her sole romantic interest and business partner.

In 2012, alien criminal Boris the Animal escapes from a maximum-security prison on the Moon to take revenge on Men in Black (MIB) Agent K, who shot off his arm and arrested him in 1969. He eventually confronts K and his partner Agent J, telling the former that he is "already dead" before leaving. J and K fall out over the latter's efforts to stop him from pursuing Boris and refusing to explain what happened. At MIB headquarters, J's superior, Agent O, denies his request for further information on Boris' apprehension; only revealing that around the same time, K also deployed the ArcNet, an interplanetary shield that prevented the now-extinct Boglodites from invading Earth. Boris obtains a time machine from Jeffrey Price, the son of a fellow prisoner named Obadiah Price, and travels back in time to July 16, 1969, to kill K, altering history. Though J retains his memories, he briefly suffers from strange side effects, which O identifies as signs that the space-time continuum was fractured before Earth is threatened by a Boglodite invasion. Recalling Boris will commit murder on July 15, 1969, J seeks out Jeffrey, obtains his own time machine, and travels back in time to stop Boris. However, he is arrested by a young K, who almost neuralyzes him until J convinces him of his mission. Following a series of clues, the pair reach the Factory, where undercover MIB agent Andy Warhol directs them to an Archanan named Griffin, who can view all possible outcomes and escaped to Earth after the Boglodites destroyed his planet. Sensing the younger Boris' impending attack, Griffin flees, but alludes to his future location. K and J later find Griffin at Shea Stadium and rescue him from the younger Boris. As the present-day Boris arrives in the past and convinces his younger self to join forces with him, Griffin gives the ArcNet to K and J. After deducing the device must be attached to the Apollo 11 rocket to send it into Earth's orbit, J reluctantly reveals K's impending death. With Griffin revealing that only K can successfully attach the device, K encourages J to take the risk. The trio use jetpacks to reach Cape Canaveral, where Griffin advises the pair to tell the truth to the military police instead of neuralyzing them. They are apprehended by the colonel, but Griffin shows him the importance of their mission. The colonel subsequently assists them in reaching the rocket while Griffin leaves, assuring J that history will be restored once K takes Boris' arm. The Borises attack the agents, but they defeat them before K attaches the ArcNet. Present-day Boris falls into the launchpad's flame trench and is incinerated by the rocket's exhaust while the ArcNet is successfully deployed. K reunites with the colonel, but the latter sacrifices himself to save him from the younger Boris, who goads K into arresting him. K refuses, killing him instead. K soon learns the colonel's son, James, was nearby and reluctantly neuralyzes him. Witnessing the events from afar, J realizes the colonel was his father and his younger self's presence kept him from forgetting K. Returning to a restored 2012, J reconciles with K while un-aged Griffin tells the viewers "this is new favorite moment in human history."

Architect Sam Baldwin moves from Chicago to Seattle with his eight-year-old son, Jonah, to start a new life following the death of his beloved wife, Maggie. Over a year later, on Christmas Eve, Jonah calls a nationally syndicated radio talk show seeking advice on how to help his father find happiness again. He persuades a reluctant Sam to go on the air and talk about how much he misses Maggie. Sam describes her as his soulmate, explaining that he knew she was the one when he first took her hand and believes he could never find true love twice. Touched by his story, thousands of women across the country write to him. One listener is Annie Reed, a Baltimore Sun reporter. She is engaged to the sensible and supportive Walter, but feels something is missing from their relationship. Her friend and editor, Becky, suggests Annie longs for the kind of destined romance found "in a movie", although Annie dismisses the idea of magical love or fate. Inspired by the romance film An Affair to Remember, Annie writes Sam a letter proposing they meet atop the Empire State Building in New York City on Valentine's Day. She decides against sending it, but Becky secretly mails it. Encouraged by the response to his radio appearance and by his friends, Sam begins dating a co-worker, Victoria, whom Jonah vehemently dislikes. When Jonah reads Annie's letter, he instinctively believes she could be the one for his father, but Sam dismisses the idea because of the distance between Seattle and Baltimore. Jonah's friend Jessica urges him to reply on Sam's behalf, agreeing to the meeting. After Jonah calls the radio show again and reveals that Sam is dating, Annie travels to Seattle on a work assignment arranged by Becky as a pretext to learn more about him. While dropping Victoria off at the airport, Sam notices Annie leaving her flight and is immediately captivated by her, unaware of who she is. Later, Annie secretly watches Sam and Jonah playing together on the beach. The following day, she visits Sam's houseboat but mistakes his sister, Suzy, for Victoria. A passing vehicle nearly strikes Annie and sounds its horn, alerting Sam to her presence. They briefly stare at one another before Annie, embarrassed, leaves. Back in Baltimore, Annie reads Jonah's immature reply and concludes she has made a mistake pursuing Sam. She decides to commit to Walter and travel to New York to meet him on Valentine's Day. Meanwhile, Jessica uses her travel agent mother's computer to book Jonah a flight to New York to find Annie. When Sam learns where Jonah has gone, he flies after him, and they reunite on the Empire State Building's observation deck. During dinner with Walter, Annie confesses her doubts about their relationship, everything that has happened since hearing Sam's radio broadcast, and they amicably end their engagement. Seeing the Empire State Building illuminated in the shape of a heart, Annie takes it as a sign. She rushes there, arriving on the observation deck moments after Sam and Jonah have left in the elevator. When Sam and Jonah return to retrieve Jonah's misplaced backpack, Sam and Annie recognize each other. After introducing themselves, Annie takes Sam's hand, and the three leave together.

Jay Bulworth, a Democratic U.S. Senator from California, faces a primary challenge from a fiery young populist. Once politically liberal, Bulworth has over time conceded to more conservative politics and to accepting donations from large corporations. While he and his wife have been having affairs with each other's knowledge for years, they maintain a happy facade for the sake of their public image. Tired of politics and unhappy with life, Bulworth makes plans to kill himself, and negotiates a $10 million life insurance policy with his daughter as the beneficiary. Knowing that a suicide would void the policy, he contracts to have himself assassinated within two days. He arrives extremely drunk at a Los Angeles campaign event, where he freely speaks his mind in the presence of the C-SPAN film crew following his campaign. After dancing all night in an underground club and smoking marijuana, he begins rapping in public. His frank, offensive remarks make him an instant media darling and re-energize his campaign. He becomes romantically involved with Nina, a young black activist, who begins to join him on campaign stops. He is pursued by the paparazzi, his insurance company, his campaign managers, and an increasingly adoring public, all the while awaiting his impending assassination. After a televised debate during which Bulworth derides insurance companies and the American healthcare system while drinking from a flask, he retreats to the home of Nina's family in impoverished South Central Los Angeles. He witnesses a group of children selling crack and intervenes to rescue them from an encounter with a racist police officer, and later discovers they work for L.D., a local drug kingpin to whom Nina's brother owes money. Bulworth eventually makes it to a television appearance arranged earlier by his campaign manager, during which he raps and repeats verbatim statements that Nina and L.D. have told him about the lives of poor black people and their opinions of various American institutions, such as education and employment. Eventually he offers the solution that "everybody should fuck everybody" until everyone is "all the same color," stunning the audience and his interviewer. Bulworth spends the film fearful of a man who had been following him under the assumption that he was the assassin trying to murder him. After the man finally pushes Bulworth to complete terror, he corners Bulworth on a set at the television studio and begins photographing Bulworth with Nina, revealing himself to be simply paparazzi. Bulworth, frustrated, flees with Nina, who reveals that she is the assassin he indirectly hired (ostensibly to make the money needed to pay off her brother's debt) and will now not carry out the job. Relieved, Bulworth falls asleep for the first time in days in Nina's arms. He sleeps for 36 hours, during which the media speculates over his sudden absence leading up to election day. Bulworth wins the primary in a landslide, and L.D. allows Nina's brother to work off the debt. Bulworth accepts a new campaign for the presidency during his victory speech, but is suddenly shot by Graham Crockett, an agent of the insurance company that was fearful of Bulworth's recent push for single-payer health care, who makes a quick escape. Bulworth's fate is left ambiguous. The final scene shows an elderly vagrant, whom Bulworth met previously, standing alone outside a hospital. He exhorts Bulworth, who is presumably inside, to not be "a ghost" but "a spirit" which, as he had mentioned earlier, can only happen if you have "a song". In the final shot of the film, he asks the same of the audience.

Dante Hicks and Randal Graves get a restraining order against Jay and Silent Bob, finally fed up with their drug dealing outside the strip mall where they work after Jay and Silent Bob tell a pair of teenagers that they were married in a Star Wars -themed wedding. Not allowed within 100 feet of the strip mall for at least a year, Jay and Silent Bob visit Brodie Bruce at his comic shop, where they learn that Miramax Films is adapting Bluntman and Chronic, the comic book based on their likenesses. The pair visit Holden McNeil, co-creator and co-writer of Bluntman and Chronic, and demand that he give them their royalty money from the film, but Holden explains he sold his half of the rights to co-creator and artist Banky Edwards. Seeing the film's negative reception online, the pair set out for Hollywood to prevent the film from ruining their image, or at least to receive the royalties owed to them. En route, they befriend an animal liberation group: Justice, Sissy, Missy, Chrissy, and Brent. The organization is a front; Brent is a patsy, who will free animals from a laboratory as a diversion while the girls rob a diamond depository. Jay throws Brent out of their van to get closer to Justice, to whom he is attracted. Justice is fond of the pair, but reluctantly accepts them as new patsies. While the girls steal the diamonds, Jay and Silent Bob free the animals, stealing an orangutan named Suzanne. They escape as the police arrive and the van explodes, believing the girls have perished. Federal Wildlife Marshal Willenholly (whose name is taken from Will and Holly Marshall, the child characters on Land of the Lost) arrives at the crime scene; oblivious to the diamond heist, he claims jurisdiction due to the escaped animals, all of which have been recovered but Suzanne. The police find footage of a video Sissy made of Jay claiming to be "the clit commander", with "Clit" edited to be an acronym for the Coalition for the Liberation of Itinerant Tree-Dwellers. Willenholly declares the crime an act of terrorism and calls for backup to hunt "the two most dangerous men on the planet." He finds Jay and Silent Bob at a diner near Vasquez Rocks, and chases them into the sewer system of a nearby dam. Suzanne helps the duo in losing Willenholly by luring him off the dam, but is subsequently abducted by a Hollywood animal acting agency. The duo then hitch a ride and arrive in Hollywood, and eventually, the Miramax lot. Chased by a team of security guards through the lot and several movie sets, including Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season, and reclaiming Suzanne from the set of Scream 4, Jay and Silent Bob end up in the dressing room of Jason Biggs and James Van Der Beek, the actors playing Bluntman and Chronic, respectively, in the film. Suzanne beats up the actors, knocking them out, and Jay and Silent Bob assume the roles while Van Der Beek and Biggs are arrested after getting mistaken for the duo. Meeting the film's anti-white director Chaka Luther King, who mistakes them for Biggs and Van Der Beek's stunt doubles, Jay and Silent Bob are then escorted onto the set and forced to fight Mark Hamill, playing the supervillain of the film Cocknocker (a combination of Hamill's roles as The Joker, The Trickster, and Luke Skywalker) in a Star Wars -esque battle. Willenholly, armed with a shotgun, arrives to capture the pair, but Justice protects them, admitting the CLIT organization was only a diversion. The other thieves arrive and a climactic gun fight ensues. Jay and Silent Bob locate Banky and demand that he shut down production of the movie. Banky refuses on account of both the large sum of money Miramax offered him for the film and that the internet will continue to troll them regardless. Silent Bob then informs Banky that he violated their original likeness rights contract by selling the film rights of Bluntman and Chronic to Miramax without their permission, and therefore could face legal trouble if he withholds their royalties. Banky finally relents and agrees to give the duo half of his payment for the film. Justice then turns herself and her former team in to Willenholly in exchange for a shorter sentence and dropping the charges on Jay and Silent Bob. The duo spend their royalty money locating everyone who mocked them, their characters, and the movie on the internet, including children and members of the clergy, and travel to assault them. The scene cuts to the El Rey theater, where a bunch of people exit, including Dante, Randal, Banky, Steve-Dave Pulski, Walt "The Fanboy" Grover, Willam Black, Hooper LaMonte, and sisters Alyssa and Tricia Jones, having just watched the Bluntman and Chronic movie, to poor reception. Jay and Silent Bob, accompanied by Justice and Willenholly (now an FBI agent), go across the street to enjoy the afterparty, featuring a performance from Morris Day and The Time. After the credits, God (Dogma) closes the View Askewniverse book.

In the Mojave Desert, a policeman pulls over a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu driven by J. Frank Parnell. The policeman opens the trunk, sees a blinding flash of white light, and instantly vaporizes, leaving only his boots behind. Otto Maddox, a young punk rocker in L.A., is fired from his job as a supermarket stock clerk. His girlfriend leaves him for his best friend. Depressed and broke, Otto is wandering the streets when a man named Bud drives up and offers him $25 to drive a car out of the neighborhood, supposedly for his wife. Otto follows Bud in the car to the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation, where he learns the car he drove was being repossessed. He refuses to join Bud as a "repo man" and goes to see his parents. After learning that his burned-out ex-hippie parents have donated the money they promised to reward him for graduating from college to a televangelist, he takes the repo job. After repossessing a flashy red Cadillac, Otto sees a woman named Leila running down the street. He gives her a ride to her workplace, the United Fruitcake Outlet. On the way, she shows him pictures of aliens that she says are in the trunk of a Chevy Malibu. She says they are dangerous due to the radiation they emit. Meanwhile, Helping Hand is offered a $20,000 bounty notice for the Malibu. Most assume that the repossession is drug-related because the bounty is far above the value of the car. Parnell arrives in L.A. driving the Malibu but cannot meet his waiting UFO compatriots because of a team of government agents led by a woman with a metal hand. When Parnell pulls into a gas station, Helping Hand's competitors, the Rodriguez brothers, take the Malibu. They stop for sodas because the car's trunk is hot. While they are out of the car, a trio of Otto's punk friends, who are on a crime spree, steal it. After visiting a nightclub, Parnell appears and tricks the punks into opening the trunk, killing one of them and scaring the other two away. Later, he picks up Otto and drives aimlessly before collapsing and dying from radiation. After surviving a convenience store shootout with the punks that leaves Bud wounded and punk Duke dead, Otto takes the Malibu back to Helping Hand and leaves it in the lot. The car is stolen again, and a chase ensues. By this time, the car is glowing bright green. Eventually, the Malibu reappears at the Helping Hand lot with Bud behind the wheel. The various groups (government agents, UFO scientists, and even the televangelist and his followers) trying to acquire the car converge on the lot, and Bud is shot by an agent in a helicopter. The glowing car resists anyone trying to approach it with arcs of electricity. Only Miller, an eccentric mechanic at Helping Hand who had explained earlier to Otto that aliens exist and can travel through time in their spaceships, can enter the car. He slides behind the wheel and beckons Otto to join him. After Otto settles into the passenger seat, the Malibu lifts straight into the air, and flies away through the city's skyline. Miller echoes Bud's line from earlier in the film: "The life of a repo man is ALWAYS intense", and the car catapults into outer space.

Bank loan officer Carl Allen has become withdrawn since his divorce from his wife Stephanie. Having an increasingly negative outlook and ignoring his friends Peter and Rooney, he misses Peter and his fiancée Lucy's engagement party. His old colleague Nick suggests that Carl attend a motivational seminar that encourages people to seize every opportunity to say "yes". At the seminar, Carl meets inspirational guru Terrence, who has him enter a " covenant with the universe" and say yes to everything asked of him. As they leave the seminar, Carl says "yes" to a homeless man's request and becomes stranded, out of gas, and with no battery life on his cell phone in Elysian Park. Walking to a gas station, he meets Allison, an eccentric young woman. She gives him a hectic ride back to his car on her scooter and, when he asks her to make out with him, she kisses him before leaving. A few days later, he is offered oral sex by his elderly neighbour Tillie for helping her put up shelves; when he declines and immediately experiences bad luck, he returns and surprisingly enjoys the moment. After having a pleasant workday, Carl is convinced that he must continue to say yes, as his previous misery was the consequence of refusing opportunities. He renews his friendships with Peter and Rooney; builds a bond with his nerdy boss, Norman; assists Lucy with her bridal shower; and learns to speak Korean, play the guitar, and fly airplanes. Accepting a band flyer outside of a coffee shop, Carl sees an idiosyncratic band called Munchausen by Proxy; the lead singer is Allison. He is charmed by her quirkiness; she is delighted by his spontaneity, and they begin dating. They sneak into the Hollywood Bowl and sing " Can't Buy Me Love " by The Beatles, among getting up to other hijinks together. Carl earns a promotion at work after approving several microloans and, using his guitar lessons, plays Third Eye Blind 's song " Jumper " to persuade a man not to commit suicide. Carl and Allison meet at the airport for a spontaneous weekend excursion. Having decided to take the first plane out of town, regardless of its destination, they end up in Lincoln, Nebraska, where they bond more. Allison confesses her love for Carl and asks him to move in with her, and he hesitantly agrees. While checking in for the return flight, Carl and Allison are detained by FBI agents who, due to Carl's recent erratic behaviour, have profiled him as a potential terrorist. Peter travels to Nebraska as Carl's attorney and explains the situation of Carl's responding to every request and opportunity with yes, simultaneously revealing the truth to Allison. Deciding she cannot trust him, she leaves Carl and refuses to return his phone calls. Having almost forgotten about Lucy's shower, Carl quickly arranges a major surprise party, as well as setting up Norman and Rooney with Soo-Mi and Tillie, respectively. After the party, Carl receives a tearful phone call from Stephanie, whose new boyfriend has walked out on her. When he goes to comfort her, she kisses him, asking him to spend the night. After Carl says no, his luck takes a turn for the worse. Deciding to end the covenant, Carl returns to the convention centre and hides in the backseat of Terrence's convertible so he can be released. However, he pops up while Terrence is driving, startling him and causing a collision. Once Carl regains consciousness in the hospital, Terrence tells him the covenant was merely a starting point to open Carl's mind to other possibilities, not to permanently take away his ability to say no. Freed from this restraint, Carl finds Allison teaching her sports-photography class and admits that he is not ready to move in with her yet but genuinely loves her, and they reconcile. Carl persuades the attendees of Terrence's next seminar to donate the clothes off their backs to charity, so Terrence is greeted by an entirely nude convention centre.

In 1897, in the hilltop city of Cheesebridge in the European country of Norvenia, rumors spread that Boxtrolls, subterranean trolls who wear cardboard boxes, have kidnapped and killed a baby. When the city's pest exterminator, Archibald Snatcher, tells the city's mayor, Lord Charles Portley-Rind, they strike a deal to allow Snatcher membership in the city's cheese-loving council, the White Hats, if Snatcher can exterminate every Boxtroll. Unbeknownst to Portley-Rind, Snatcher has severe lactose intolerance. In reality, the Boxtrolls are peaceful and emerge from underground at night to scavenge for discarded items. The Boxtrolls’ leader, Fish, cares for the baby, who he has named Eggs. As Eggs grows up, Snatcher captures several Boxtrolls, leaving him distraught. One night after Lord Portley-Rind's daughter, Winifred, sees Eggs with Fish and another Boxtroll named Shoe, Snatcher captures Fish. Eggs sneaks to the surface to rescue Fish. He emerges in an annual fair to commemorate his disappearance, where he discovers the city's inaccurate portrayal of the Boxtrolls. He follows Winnie, and she directs him to Snatcher's headquarters, located at an abandoned factory. Eggs rescues Fish, but they are caught while trying to escape. Snatcher recognizes Eggs as the baby and reveals that he is forcing the captured Boxtrolls to build him a machine. Winnie, who covertly followed Eggs, overhears this exchange, helps Fish and Eggs escape from Snatcher and takes shelter with them in the Boxtrolls' caves. Fish explains that Eggs' father was Herbert Trubshaw, a great inventor who discovered that the Boxtrolls were fellow inventors. Snatcher was a close friend of Herbert, but one night, he asked Herbert to build something that could help him kill the Boxtrolls. However, knowing that the Boxtrolls were innocent, Herbert refused, so Snatcher threatened to kidnap Eggs. During the struggle, Herbert gave Eggs to Fish to protect him before seemingly being killed by Snatcher. Winnie agrees to help Eggs tell her father the truth. At a ball held to commemorate the purchase of a giant cheese wheel called the Briehemoth, Eggs tries to reveal his identity to Portley-Rind, but is confronted by Snatcher, who is disguised as a woman named Madame Frou-Frou. While trying to avoid Snatcher, Eggs inadvertently knocks the cheese wheel into a river. He announces himself as the baby, but Portley-Rind does not believe him. He tries to persuade the remaining Boxtrolls to flee, but unknowingly demoralizes them. Snatcher digs into their caves with his new exterminating machine and captures them all. Eggs awakens in a cage to discover that Herbert is still alive and imprisoned beside him. He sees the Boxtrolls stacked in a crusher and begs them to stand up for themselves, but they are seemingly killed by the crusher. Snatcher drives his machine to Lord Portley-Rind's house, shows him the flattened boxes as evidence of the Boxtrolls' extinction, and demands Portley-Rind's white hat in exchange for killing the final Boxtroll, which is actually Eggs disguised. The Boxtrolls, who have escaped from the crusher by leaving their boxes, arrive to free Eggs while Herbert reveals himself, causing Portley-Rind and the citizens to realize that Snatcher had lied to them. Snatcher tries to take Portley-Rind's hat by force while two of his henchmen, Mr. Trout and Mr. Pickles, decide to turn against him. Eggs and the Boxtrolls manage to disable the machine, which crushes Snatcher's right-hand man, Mr. Gristle, to death. Eggs and Snatcher are thrown clear and land on the recovered Briehemoth. This causes Snatcher to swell to a grotesque, monstrous size. Snatcher holds Winnie hostage and forces Lord Portley-Rind to give up his hat in exchange for her safety, but eventually explodes after eating a piece of a rare cheese. Now that the townspeople know that Boxtrolls are peaceful, both sides agree to form a peaceful coexistence with each other.