After the town of Kaihoro's entire population disappear, the Astro Investigation and Defence Service (AIDS) sends their agents Derek, Frank, Ozzy, and Barry to investigate. They find the town overrun by man-eating aliens disguised as humans in blue shirts. Barry kills one of the aliens and is attacked by others. After Derek notifies Frank and Ozzy, he begins torturing Robert, an alien they caught earlier. Robert's screaming attracts a number of aliens. Derek kills the would-be rescuers, but he is attacked by Robert and falls off a cliff ledge, to his presumed death. Meanwhile, charity collector Giles passes through Kaihoro. He escapes Robert's attack and comes to nearby house for help, only to get captured by another alien. Giles later wakes up in a tub of water filled with vegetables and is told he is about to be cooked and eaten. Derek wakes up in a seagull 's nest with a hole in his head, so he uses a hat to keep his brains from leaking out. That night, Frank, Ozzy, and Barry infiltrate the aliens' house and find a room filled with bloody cardboard boxes, likely containing the corpses of former Kaihoro residents. They kill an alien, and Frank wears its shirt to infiltrate their meeting. He learns that the victims have been harvested for food and hears of their recent hostage, Giles. The alien later dines on Robert's vomit, and the disguised (and disgusted) Frank has to follow suit. He escapes and tells the others of the plan. They save Giles as the aliens sleep. At sunrise, they try to leave but are attacked by the aliens, and a gunfight ensues. Derek emerges and joins the fight, using his belt as a headband when the hat is shot off. He grabs a chainsaw from the boot of his car and heads for the aliens' house. As the group leaves with Giles, the alien leader (Lord Crumb) and his followers morph into their true form and follow. Ozzy uses a rocket launcher to explode Frank's car, which has been overrun by aliens. Frank and Ozzy hunt for Lord Crumb and kill many aliens along the way. Meanwhile, Derek kills an alien with his chainsaw and replaces the missing parts of his brain with its brain. An alien prepares to shoot Frank and Ozzy, but it is beheaded by Derek. Frank and Ozzy are shocked to see him alive, and see he has lost his mind. After they escape the house, Lord Crumb shoots Ozzy in the leg and Frank fires his rocket launcher at the leader, but misses. Lord Crumb knocks out Derek and the house transforms into a giant spaceship and blasts off into space. On board, Derek looks out the window to see Earth. He ambushes Crumb and kills the alien with his chainsaw. He proclaims war on the alien, then puts on the alien leader's skin and laughs maniacally as he rockets towards the alien planet. Back on Earth, the survivors drive away in Derek's car.

Richard Gaddis is a small-time crook with a penchant for con games. To hook marks, he acts and dresses like a well-to-do businessman, believing that one must look like a professional in order to be a successful conman. Gaddis is searching for a new partner with whom he can perform more sophisticated cons. He discovers Rodrigo after he sees the young man playing some minor con games in a casino - bar. When Rodrigo is caught, Gaddis acts the part of a vice officer to save him from being arrested. Rodrigo's contribution is a face and naive manner so trustable that he is able to con anyone, while Richard is both completely unprincipled and clever. After several small tests to determine Rodrigo's trustworthiness, he suggests a partnership, to which Rodrigo quickly agrees. Although Rodrigo distrusts Richard greatly, he agrees to partner him on a gigantic scam, provided he gets a percentage of the money gained to help his ailing father, who is in trouble because of his gambling debts. Richard accepts, and they plan to sell a fraudulent version of a silver certificate currency note to William Hannigan, a rich collector who is in town. When Hannigan takes a fancy to the uptight Valerie, Gaddis' sister who is a concierge at a hotel, Gaddis is forced to pull her into the scam, the price of which is Richard's admission to their brother Michael that he has cheated him out of his share of their inheritance. The plot twists constantly as each of the characters becomes more deeply invested in the scam, and the ever-deceitful Richard tries to cheat Rodrigo, Valerie and Michael out of their share of the take. In a twist ending, it is revealed that all the major players involved, including Rodrigo and Hannigan, were playing a "confidence game" against Gaddis from the very beginning, so that Valerie and Michael could rightfully take their share of their inheritance.

After living in the UK for ten years, author Bill Bryson has moved back to the US and is living in New Hampshire. Now in his 60s, he has been living there peacefully. A television interview reports that he has published several popular books and there is speculation he will be writing more. Bryson, however, has no such plans. Bryson and his wife Catherine attend a funeral. Afterwards, he takes a stroll up to the nearby Appalachian Trail, and suddenly decides he will hike its entire length. Catherine objects, presenting many accounts of accidents and murders on the trail. She relents on the condition that he not travel alone. He agrees and searches for a friend willing to join him. Everyone declines his invitation; some declare him insane. Finally, he is contacted by Stephen Katz, an old friend who offers to be a hiking companion. Despite appearances, Stephen claims to be fit enough for the challenge. Bill's wife is unhappy with his choice, but relents. Within less than a mile of their departure point, as groups of hikers overtake and pass them, they begin to grasp the difficulty of their ambition. Shortly after, a group of young children effortlessly runs by them up the trail, laughing and calling out to each other. Seeing others pass by so easily motivates them to carry on. Weeks pass, and they overcome obstacles and encounter interesting characters together, some friendlier and some more hostile. One day, having hiked miserably through pouring rain, they reach a hut. Carved into the log wall is an Appalachian Trail map showing the trail and their present location. They realize they have finished less than half of the trail after spending three months on it. The two ultimately trek into a restricted section posted "for experienced hikers only". While maneuvering their heavy and awkward backpacks alongside a precipitous drop, Bill trips and pulls Stephen with him down a steep, rocky cliff. They fall about fifteen feet onto a ledge spacious enough to be comfortable, but far enough below the trail to be unable to get back up to resume the hike. They spend the night there with no clear hope of rescue. The next day, they are awakened by early morning hikers who are able to get them off the ledge. The men decide they have had enough and end their journey. When comfortably back at home, Bill, going through his mail, finds a series of postcards from Stephen that were mailed from their various stops along the trail. The last one reads: "What's next?' Bill sits down and begins typing on his computer, " A Walk In The Woods."

Mathias/'Jim', a down-and-out New Yorker, travels to Paris planning to sell the large, valuable apartment in a coveted area he has inherited from his estranged father. Once there, he discovers an old woman, Mathilde, living in the apartment with her daughter Chloé. Jim quickly learns that the apartment is a " viager " – an ancient French system for buying and selling property – meaning he will not actually be in possession of it until Mathilde dies. Until then he owes her a life annuity of €2,400 a month. All this is a surprise to him, as his father never told him and Jim had communication problems with the French lawyer, who does not speak English. Jim has no money and no place to live, but Mathilde will allow him to stay in the apartment with her if he pays rent. However, to pay for the next life annuity payment, he takes and sells furniture from the apartment and also asks a prospective buyer of his contract for advance payments. Inquiring after Mathilde's health her doctor, one of her English students, tells Jim she is in excellent health. Chatting over dinner, he learns she also trades English lessons with the fishmonger. Mathilde asks him if he had visited France over the years, but he had not as his mother considered it to be enemy territory. The next day, Jim invites Chloé and developer François Roy to a café as he wants to discuss possibly selling part of the house by dividing it into two apartments. Neither likes the idea, so Jim asks for a modest deposit while he considers Roy's offer (his way of getting some cash). Discovering Chloé is going to dinner with her male companion, Jim follows her after class. She goes to a café, waving towards the man with whom Jim has seen her entering a hotel some days before. He waves her off, as he is going to dine with his wife and daughters. Observing this, Jim calls her out on it, trying to blackmail her to avoid paying the 2,400 euros. Mathias/Jim discovers that Mathilde and his father had a very long-lasting affair which had started seven years before he was born, while both were married (they could not afford to marry each other). Jim tries to make Mathilde see how her affair with his father affected him and his mother. He felt unloved and ignored, so he turned to drink and had a string of failed marriages. She had a string of failed suicides, finally succeeding when he was 19, which he saw upon his return from college. After meeting with Roy to accept the sale, Jim returns to the apartment. Finding a photo of himself and Chloé together at ten, Mathilde mentions it was the only time he has been there, and that his father stopped coming by after his mother died. Then Jim himself confesses to having slit his own wrists at 40, but although his father lived a few blocks away he did not visit. Upon reflection of how the adultery of their parents affected them emotionally, Chloé breaks off her affair. Both she and Jim recall and bond over their childhoods. At 10 she realised about her mother's affair, at the same time he was trying to prevent the first of many suicide attempts by his. The next day, Jim accepts the papers from Roy's lawyer, and Mathilde comes in, postulating that his mother must have known and approved of her affair with his father. When he divulges that she had 10 to 15 suicide attempts, the last being successful, she collapses from shock. Jim and Chloé have a moment and kiss, but then when she asks Mathilde if she shares a father with Jim, she says she is unsure. He overhears, so goes to run blood tests at the doctor's. Once Mathias/Jim gets the confirmation that he and Chloé are not related, as she wants to stay in the apartment, he decides at the last minute to decline Roy's multi-million Euro offer for the apartment/contract. Mathilde points out that they do not have to worry about money if they sell en viager, albeit they would receive a modest income due to their relatively young ages.

Con artist Marla Grayson makes a living by convincing the justice system to grant her guardianship over elders who she pretends cannot take care of themselves. She places them in an assisted living facility, where they are sedated and lose contact with the outside world. She then sells off their homes and assets, pocketing the proceeds. She and the court deny a man, Mr. Feldstrom, access to his mother after he attempts to force his way into the facility. He later threatens her outside the courthouse, saying that he hopes she is killed. Dr. Karen Amos informs Marla about a potential case, a wealthy retiree named Jennifer Peterson with no apparent husband or close family. A judge appoints Marla guardian after she and Dr. Amos falsely testify that Jennifer has dementia, confusion, and loss of mobility. Marla moves Jennifer into assisted living and gets to work selling Jennifer's furniture, car, and home. While rooting through Jennifer's possessions, Marla discovers the key to a safe deposit box. It contains a watch, gold bars, bank notes, and hidden, loose diamonds, which she takes and stashes away. As Marla's girlfriend and business partner, Fran, oversees the renovation of the house, a cab arrives driven by Alexi Ignatyev, who says he is there to pick up Jennifer. Fran says that Jennifer has moved. Alexi returns to his employer, Roman Lunyov, distressed. Roman, a crime lord, is revealed to be Jennifer's son. He threatens Alexi and orders him to find his mother and report back. Mafia lawyer Dean Ericson offers to pay Marla $150,000 in cash to release Jennifer but she refuses, willing to do it only if she is paid $5 million. He threatens Marla and takes her to court. The judge dismisses the case as Ericson cannot prove Jennifer hired him. Fran discovers "Jennifer Peterson" is an identity stolen from an infant who died of polio. When Jennifer refuses to tell Marla her real identity, Marla teams up with property manager Sam Rice and withdraws filling many of Jennifer's basic needs. Finding his mother's safe deposit box rifled, Roman sends three thugs to Jennifer's facility to take her. This effort fails, and Marla helps police apprehend Alexi, who is one of the men. Fran's police contact tells them that Alexi is the sibling of two other mafia bosses who supposedly died in a fire. Having failed to rescue his mother, Roman has Dr. Amos killed at her office. After hearing this news, Marla and Fran move into an unsold property of a previous victim. Jennifer is baited into attacking Marla when she visits the facility and is moved to a psychiatric ward. Marla is tranquilized and kidnapped while Fran is attacked in their home. Marla is taken to Roman and demands $10 million to arrange Jennifer's release. He refuses, and his associates knock her out with chloroform and send her in a car into a lake. She escapes and returns home to find Fran beaten unconscious as gas fills the house. They escape an explosion and flee to another unsold property. Marla shows Fran the diamonds she has hidden there. She offers Fran a choice: they can use the diamonds to start a new life elsewhere, or they can get revenge. Marla and Fran track down Roman and kidnap him. They force drugs into his body, burn his car, and leave him on a forest trail. He will be discovered high on drugs and with no identification. Roman is discovered by a jogger, and is rescued. With no identity, Roman is designated a "John Doe" by a judge, who appoints Marla as Roman's legal guardian. Marla visits Roman and offers to release him and Jennifer from her guardianship for $10 million. Instead, Roman offers her a partnership in a global business based on her scam. She accepts and, using his money and connections, becomes a powerful, wealthy CEO. Roman is reunited with Jennifer, while Marla marries Fran. While leaving a TV interview, Marla is shot by Feldstrom. He says that his mother died alone in the facility because no one would let him see her. As Feldstrom is arrested, Fran cries out for help as Marla bleeds to death in her arms.

Advocate Steve Myers (Billy Connolly) is a disillusioned lawyer who becomes fed-up with the corruption within the judicial system. He quits law, buys a small fishing boat and takes up fishing for a living. Steve's fishing boat is struck by lightning and explodes into pieces, burns and sinks. He informs his insurance company, which reviews and then subsequently declines his claim on the grounds that it is not liable as his fishing boat was destroyed due to an " act of God ". Frustrated that his claim is repeatedly declined, Steve files a claim against God, naming religious officials (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc) as representatives of God and thereby the respondents. The religious leaders, their respective lawyers and their insurance companies get together to find a way to settle this dilemma, which catches the fancy of the media. It is in court that God's representatives will have to admit that the destruction of Steve's fishing boat was actually God's act, accept and compensate him, or deny it altogether thereby denying God's existence, leaving the onus on Steve to prove his claim. Steve's battle brings media attention leading to a meeting with journalist Anna Redmond (Judy Davis) who helps to raise his public profile, enlisting the support of others who had fallen victim to insurance companies' "acts of God" clause. He also faces heavy criticism and protests from religious groups as his profile grows, and he backs the church into a disadvantageous position. However, the attention takes its toll on Steve's family, who are exploited by the media, his ex-wife already crippled by debt as the guarantor of the boat. Steve faces a reality check as his family considers moving to Perth, on the other side of the country. Meanwhile, Anna Redmond comes under fire for a history of disputes and attacks on insurance companies, drawing criticism that the case is little more than a publicity stunt. Facing a drawn out legal battle and the impact it would have on those around him, Steve decides he has won a moral victory, and withdraws from the case but not before convincing the judge that insurance companies' use of the term "acts of God" is a misleading term.

Upon discovering that his wife Ellen is having an affair, aerospace engineer and depressed insomniac Ed Okin drives to LAX on his friend Herb's suggestion. There, he is surprised by a beautiful jewel smuggler, Diana, who jumps into his car and begs him to drive her away from four Iranian SAVAK agents who are chasing her. She persuades him to drive her to various locations and he becomes embroiled in her predicament. After becoming increasingly exasperated with her demands, he discovers that Diana has smuggled priceless emeralds from the Shah of Iran 's treasury into the country and is being pursued by a variety of international assailants. Upon learning that it is in truth a struggle for a real estate deal, the couple strike a deal with Shaheen Parvici to secure their own safety. Ed and Diana's caper gets increasingly out of hand, until Diana is eventually taken hostage by the thugs at the airport; here, Ed shares his ennui with the man holding a gun to Diana's head. The man shoots himself, instead. Ed and Diana are taken to a motel room by federal agents, one of whom gives them a briefcase with US$ 750,000 (equivalent to $ 2.2 million in 2025) in cash from Jack Caper, one of Diana's wealthy friends. Diana showers and Ed finally sleeps. He wakes up after a full night's rest to an empty hotel room with most of the money gone. However, when he leaves the room, Diana is waiting for him, with the money, a smile and a request for a ride to the airport.

In Passaic, New Jersey, Elroy Fletcher owns the declining "Be Kind Rewind" VHS rental store. The building is condemned as a slum and the officials led by Mr. Baker give him 60 days to upgrade it to the required standards, or they will demolish it to make way for high-end development. Fletcher leaves on a trip with friends to memorialize jazz musician Fats Waller and visit rental store chains to research efficient and modernized ways of running one, leaving his only employee Mike to work alone. Before leaving, Fletcher cautions Mike to keep his conspiracy theorist friend Jerry away from the store. However, Mike misinterprets his warnings on the train window and is left confused. After attempting to sabotage an electrical substation, believing its energy to be melting his brain, Jerry receives a shock which leaves him magnetized. When entering the store the next day, he inadvertently erases all its VHS tapes. Mike discovers the disaster and is further pressed when Fletcher's acquaintance Miss Falewicz wants to rent Ghostbusters. To prevent her from reporting a problem to Fletcher, Mike comes up with an idea: as Miss Falewicz has never seen the movie, he proposes to recreate the film with cheap special effects, using himself and Jerry as the actors and hoping to fool her. They complete the movie just in time when a customer named Jack arrives asking for Rush Hour 2. Mike and Jerry repeat their filming, enlisting the help of a local girl named Alma for some of the parts. She later makes Jerry a remedy that demagnetizes him at the cost of his vomiting and emitting magnetic urine. Word of mouth spreads through Miss Falewicz's nephew Craig and his gang of the inadvertently hilarious results of Mike and Jerry's filming of Ghostbusters, and soon the store is seeing more requests for such movies. Mike, Jerry, and Alma pretend the films came from Sweden to justify long wait times and higher costs for the rental ($20 instead of $1). To meet demand, they enlist the locals to help out in making the movies, using them as actors in their films. When Fletcher returns intent on converting the store to a DVD rental outlet, he recognizes that they are making more money from the "sweded" films than from normal rentals after learning about what happened and joins in with the process. However, the success is put to a halt when government attorney Ms. Lawson arrives with two federal agents. Ms. Lawson insists the "sweded" films are copyright violations. They seize the store's tapes which they destroy with help from a steamroller operator much to the dismay of the locals and seize the assets to pay off the respective studios. As a result, Fletcher gives up hope and reveals to Mike that he made up the connection of Fats Waller to the building. Fletcher is given a week to evacuate it before its demolition. With the help of the locals, Jerry and Alma convince Fletcher and Mike to give one last hurrah and put together a documentary dedicated to the alternate history of Fats Waller. They create Fats Waller Was Born Here. On the day the building is scheduled for demolition, Fletcher invites all the locals to watch the final film and quietly reveals to Miss Falewicz that he gave Mr. Baker permission to go ahead with the demolition plans after the film ends. When Jerry accidentally breaks the store's TV screen trying to raise it for all to see, a nearby DVD store owner loans them his video projector, allowing them to show the movie on a cloth placed in the store's window. Fletcher, Mike, and Jerry depart the store to find a bigger crowd, including the wrecking crew, who have gathered in the street to watch the film through the window and are cheered on.

Kate, Steve, Mick, and Jenn Jones move into an upscale suburb under the guise of being a typical family relocating because of the changing nature of Kate's and Steve's careers. In reality, Kate is the leader of a team of stealth marketers, professional salespeople who disguise product placement as a daily routine. Their clothing, accessories, furniture, and even food are carefully planned and stocked by various companies to create visibility in a desirable consumer market. While Kate's team is highly effective, Steve is new to the team, Jenn is a closet nymphomaniac with a penchant for hitting on her fake fathers, and a 30-day review is fast approaching. The team quickly ingrains itself into the community, slowly shifting from displaying products to recommending them. Soon, local stores and businesses are stocking products based on the Joneses' trend-setting styles. However, at the end of the 30-day review, Steve discovers that he has the lowest sales numbers of the team and Kate's job is endangered unless he can get his numbers up before the next review in 60 days. Eventually, Steve begins to find a sales tactic that works by playing on the fears of his neighbors and sympathizing with their dull, repetitive, unfulfilled careers. As someone frustrated with his job and disconnected from his fake "family", he turns to their products to keep himself entertained. When Steve recognizes this same pattern in their neighbors, his sales begin to steadily increase. He starts pitching products as the solution for suburban boredom and generating product "buzz" through unwitting ropers. The team's dynamics become more complicated when Kate applies herself to the technique as well. Realizing that they can boost sales by perfecting their fake family dynamic to sell the image of a lifestyle, the lines between acting and reality start to break down. Things also get more complicated when Mick finds himself growing closer to an unpopular girl at the high school, Naomi, in whom he can confide. Jenn's flirtation with Alex Bayner, one of the men in the neighborhood, raises the suspicions of the neighbors. The team's cover is almost blown several times. Once when an old acquaintance of Steve's recognizes him at a restaurant, again when Jenn's indiscretions nearly expose her real age, and after a party where Mick markets alcohol to minors. Eventually, each member of the team finds that the constant pretense slowly erodes their desires. Jenn's dreams of running away with a rich, older man come to a close when she realizes that she is being used by Alex. Mick has a crisis of conscience when Naomi gets into a car accident after drinking too much of a wine cooler they were marketing to teens. Worse, when he makes a pass at Naomi's brother, he gets a black eye in return. After amassing nearly record-breaking numbers, Steve is offered the chance to join an "icon" unit alone. He refuses, knowing that this is Kate's dream and because he believes that the "family" can do it together. When Steve's closest friend in the community, Larry, reveals that he's going to lose his house because he's overextended his credit, Steve tries again to see if Kate wants something more than a pretend marriage and Kate agrees to go Arizona with him during their vacation. The next day Steve discovers to his horror that Larry has committed suicide over the debts. Grief-stricken, Steve confesses to the community about the real nature of his job. With their covers blown, the rest of the Joneses leave quickly and are reassigned to a new home. Steve refuses the offer to join an icon cell and tracks the family down to their new location. There, he reunites with Kate and tries one last time to convince her to leave. Initially, she rebuffs him, and Steve leaves. As he is walking away down the darkened street, Kate pulls up in her car and stops and Steve gets in. When Steve asks "Where to?" Kate says " Arizona ".

Bartleby Gaines is a strongly persuasive high school senior in Wickliffe, Ohio. His gifts do not extend to his grades, however, and Bartleby receives rejection letters from all the colleges to which he applies, including those with high acceptance rates. To gain approval from his demanding father, Bartleby creates a fake college, the South Harmon Institute of Technology (S.H.I.T.), and is joined by Rory Thayer, who only applied to Yale University and was rejected due to legacy preferences; Darryl "Hands" Holloway, who lost his athletic scholarship after an injury; and Glen, an outcast who received a 0 on his SAT due to not signing his name. To make the "college" seem legitimate to his father, Bartleby convinces his best friend, Sherman Schrader III, who has been accepted into his father's prestigious alma mater, Harmon College, to aid him by building a website. The two also hire Sherman's cynical uncle and a former philosophy professor at Harmon College, Dr. Ben Lewis, to pose as Dean. They then lease an abandoned psychiatric hospital near Harmon College and renovate it superficially to give the appearance of a college campus. Their plan initially succeeds in fooling Bartleby's parents, but backfires when the website automatically enrolls hundreds of other applicants. Out of empathy, Bartleby lets them believe the school is real and that they will finally be accepted, despite objections from his friends. After a visit to Harmon disenchants him with traditional college life, he decides to let the students create their own curriculum. This ranges from traditional topics of study like culinary arts and woodcarving to more unusual courses such as meditation, skateboarding, and even psychokinesis. As the college is further developed, Bartleby starts a school newspaper, a clothing line, and a mascot, while Dean Lewis gives brutally honest lectures about life that draw large crowds; and the students of South Harmon spend most of their time partying. Meanwhile Richard Van Horne, the narcissistic Dean of Harmon College, plans to tear down old and unused buildings on and near campus to construct a park-like walkway similar to Yale and Harvard 's, hoping to make Harmon look more prestigious. Van Horne dispatches Harmon's student body president Hoyt Ambrose to buy up the nearby properties, but Bartleby refuses to relinquish his lease, becoming an obstacle to Van Horne's ambitions. The dispute turns personal when Monica Moreland, a girl Bartleby has been vying for the affections of since high school, breaks up with Hoyt after catching him with another woman. She begins frequently visiting Bartleby at South Harmon, eventually deciding to transfer and start a relationship with him. Meanwhile, Schrader is attempting to join Hoyt's fraternity as a legacy but is constantly humiliated and abused by its members. After discovering Sherman at a South Harmon party, the fraternity forcibly coerces him into revealing South Harmon as a sham. Hoyt uses the information to contact all the students' parents and Van Horne exposes South Harmon as a fake institution. The school is forced to close, and Bartleby is at risk of prison time for fraud. Sherman, who directly experienced much of Harmon College's abuses, files with Ohio's State Board of Education for accreditation, giving Bartleby a chance to make South Harmon a legitimate college. At the subsequent hearing, Bartleby's attempts to meet the board's standards for accreditation frequently fall flat and proves their unconventional curriculum and student services to be lacking. Believing himself to be doomed, Bartleby makes an impassioned speech about the failures of conventional education and the importance of seeking knowledge and personal growth through following one's own passions. This convinces the board to grant his school a one-year probationary accreditation to test his new system. After some renovations, the college reopens with even more students enrolling, including Sherman and Monica, and Bartleby's friends becoming part of the faculty. Bartleby finally earns the approval of his father, who is proud his son now runs a College. In the film's final scene, Van Horne's car spontaneously explode due to an eccentric student having learned psychokinesis.

At the birth of Tanguy (Éric Berger), her only son, Édith Guetz (Sabine Azéma) said to him: "You’re so cute, if you want, you can stay at home your whole life." At 28 years old, Tanguy is still living with his parents. Now a Political Sciences grad student, a former student of ENS Ulm, a teacher at INALCO, working on a thesis about the emergence of the concept of subjectivity in ancient China, and fluent in Chinese and Japanese, he could fully support himself and leave the family nest. However, he persists in staying, loving his parents above all, whom he describes as "intelligent, open-minded, generous, who let me do whatever I enjoy." Although they don’t show it to him, his parents, Paul (André Dussollier) and Édith, are increasingly annoyed at the idea of him staying at home, which he treats like a hotel, coming and going at any hour or bringing home one-night stands. This irritation increases further when Tanguy announces that he will delay his thesis by at least a year. Paul’s mother, Odile (Hélène Duc), predicts that "the Pekingese" will stay under their roof for many more years and blames their lack of firmness. Édith regularly consults a psychiatrist to explain her dreams of killing or mutilating her son. The first technique the parents use is to try to make him dislike the house so he leaves of his own accord. They throw away or damage his clothes, the father secretly unscrews a bathroom threshold bar so he injures himself while walking barefoot, the mother hides spoiled food to make his room smell bad, and she takes over the room he uses as an office to force him to stay in his bedroom. Additionally, she makes as much noise as possible when he works or cuts the electricity unexpectedly when he’s writing his thesis on his computer. Tanguy doesn’t give up and, during a conversation with his grandmother, mentions his low opinion of living alone, comparing a recently settled friend’s sad life to what he considers his "daily happiness" with his parents. Taking it further, Paul and Édith try to ruin his nights as well: Paul pretends to have insomnia and joins him in the middle of the night to chat. They interfere in his love life by making the women he brings home think he’s a Don Juan. Édith breaks up Tanguy and his girlfriend Marguerite without knowing they were seriously planning to live together. Far from being angry, Tanguy thanks his mother for helping him end a relationship that scared him given his ambitions in life. Although he had always categorically refused, Paul finally agrees to pay for an apartment for Tanguy. After long discussions, he accepts and chooses a flat in an Asian neighborhood in the 13th arrondissement. The joy is short-lived for the parents because, apart from his incessant phone calls to stay in contact with them, each night he suffers from anxiety and panic attacks, ending up in the hospital. Taking pity on him, Édith agrees to take him back home. Now showing a different side, Paul sets very strict house rules, which Tanguy calls "military discipline," governing their interactions at home, such as the obligation to tidy his room or the prohibition of talking back to his parents. Paul also finds a job for Tanguy tutoring a student preparing for entry to a prestigious school. When his parents discover that, between his research grant, his teaching, and the private lessons he gives, Tanguy earns at least 25,000 francs a month (about 3,800 euros), they throw him out of the house. Tanguy takes them to court and wins, with his lawyer citing Article 203 of the Civil Code, which obliges parents to support their children. Relations become explosive when Tanguy returns to the family home. Paul perpetually shouts at his son, who remains calm, countering with Chinese proverbs he knows. The parents decide to humiliate him by transforming his room into a nursery, replacing his bed with a cot and hanging a mobile above it. His mother disrupts his classes to ridicule him in front of his students, even participating as a student herself and eventually sleeping with one of them. Against his parents’ expectations, Tanguy is unfazed by these actions and forgives his mother without hesitation. Just as Paul, at his wits’ end, hires some thugs to "beat up" his son, he learns that Tanguy has finally left the house, leaving behind a letter generously thanking his parents. Their joy is once again short-lived as Paul’s mother Odile falls in her bathroom and, needing months of rehabilitation, reminds them of Article 205 of the Civil Code, "the same as 203… but for the elderly." Ten months later, Paul and Édith receive a letter from Tanguy inviting them to visit him in Beijing, where he has married a Chinese woman and is expecting a child. Observing that in this Chinese family both the parents and grandparents live under the same roof, Odile gets the last word, turning to Paul and saying she’s glad to see "people who take responsibility for their family, unlike some others."

In the 2000s, Amanda is an aimless 25-year-old Italian woman who feels alienated from her wealthy family—particularly her mother and her older sister—and struggles to form meaningful social connections after finishing school in Paris. Despite having the opportunity to work in her family's pharmacy business, she instead spends her time wandering the city, frequenting the local cinematheque and raves in search of friends, trying to forge online connections via video chat rooms while staying in a hotel room funded by her parents, and visiting an aging horse tied up at a nearby farm. At her mother's suggestion, Amanda visits Rebecca, the daughter of her mother's friend Viola and a childhood friend she has not seen for many years. A former athlete, Rebecca lives a reclusive life, rarely leaving her room and regularly attending psychotherapy sessions at home. After Rebecca slams her bedroom door on Amanda without saying a word, Amanda learns from Viola that she and Rebecca were inseparable as toddlers before Amanda's family moved away. Convinced that she and Rebecca could have been best friends all along, Amanda becomes determined to rekindle their friendship. After Amanda repeatedly tries to force her way into Rebecca's room, Rebecca finally lets Amanda in and they warm up to each other. At a rave, Amanda meets a boy whom she suspects is a drug dealer, but he clarifies he hands out free condoms at raves. The two go out to eat and become acquainted, after which Amanda saves his contact as "My Boyfriend" on her phone. When the boy invites Amanda to his upcoming birthday party, telling her she can bring someone, she invites Rebecca to accompany her. As the two girls continue to spend time together, Amanda moves in temporarily with Rebecca, though Amanda becomes jealous of Rebecca's therapist, Ann. The boy from the rave tells Amanda to stop texting him incessantly as he is dating another girl, leaving her heartbroken. Back at Rebecca's house, Ann instructs Amanda to tell Rebecca that she is leaving for Paris, before declaring that Amanda's borderline personality traits are not good for Rebecca. In despair, Amanda flees, steals the horse and returns to Rebecca's house with the horse, leaving it in the garden. She then goes to Rebecca's room and tries to persuade her to run away with her, but Rebecca agrees with Ann's assessment and reveals that Viola made Rebecca befriend Amanda when they were children because everyone felt sorry for Amanda. Devastated, Amanda leaves. Amanda moves back into her family's villa, and her relationship with her mother and sister gradually improves. Viola approaches Amanda, asking her to reunite with Rebecca. Amanda tells Viola that Rebecca can find her at the local cinematheque, but Rebecca never shows up. Later, the boy from the rave accuses Amanda of crashing his party the previous night and setting off firecrackers in his living room, but she denies it. Realizing that this was Rebecca's doing, Amanda goes to her house and thanks her. Rebecca confesses that she rode to the party on horseback, but the firecrackers scared off the horse. Amanda and Rebecca set off in search of the horse, suggesting a tentative reconciliation.