Bill Macy

Drew (Ben Afflek) is wowing a bunch of ad execs with a promotional idea for spiked eggnog. That night with his girlfriend he presents her with two tickets to Fiji. She's disappointed because she was expecting a proposal & walks out on him. The next day, he's at work and tells his secretary to send her a gift to win her back. Drew realizes that he's going to be alone for Christmas, so he starts calling up all the people in his address book. No one wants to have him over for Christmas. He ends up running to the airport to catch the shrink of his girlfriend when he's trying to leave on a plane with his family. The shrink tells him to write down his grievances on a piece of paper, and then burn them at a place that reminds him of his childhood. Drew drives out to the suburbs and pulls up to the house he grew up in, which is now occupied by a different family. Inside the house, the parents Mr. Valco and Mrs. Valco (James Gandolfini and Catherine O'Hara) are arguing about the son spending too much time on the computer. They see Drew kneeling down on the sidewalk and light something on fire. The dad walks out and hits him over the head with a shovel. Inside the house. The family is standing around wondering if he's dead. When Drew comes to, the Valco's let him stay for dinner. They ask him to leave. Drew offers to pay them $250,000 to pretend to be his family for the holidays. A lawyer comes and they sign legal papers. He makes them go tree shopping, and the dad has to wear a Santa hat. The sister Alicia (Christina Applegate) comes home and has no intention of adopting this new brother. She demands that they kick him out. At dinner, Drew shows up with an old man and says that he is the Grandpa. He's a local theater performer who Drew hired to fill the role. They all sit down and have dinner. Drew pulls out a script and gives copies to everyone and asks that they all read through the scene. Everyone gets annoyed. Mr. Valco tells Drew that he and his wife are thinking about separating and having him there is making things worse. Drew tells him to go out and buy something for himself that will make him feel better. Then he tells the wife that he's going to set up a private photo shoot and have her all dressed up. She's so happy she cried. At the shoot, she's dressed in leather and a ton of makeup. She seems to be having a great time. Drew gets the son and sister to go sledding with him. The old hill is now too small, so he charters a helicopter and carries them to the top of a mountain. They sort of dare each other into getting on the sled. Then they go screaming down the mountain. At the end Drew and Alicia crash and start laughing. Drew & Alicia both get colds and spend the afternoon talking and watching TV. She tells him about a time when she was 9 and saw a tree covered in ice & wanted to live that moment again. Drew confides that he never lived in that house. His father walked out on them when he was little. His mother worked in a diner, and he spent every Christmas alone. Alicia & Drew almost kiss, but she sneezes. Later on, Drew takes Alicia outside. He had the tree covered in ice and flew in a bunch of dancers and singers. Alicia gets offended because it's so over the top. Meanwhile, the girlfriend is talking with her own parents. She got the gift (a diamond bracelet) that his secretary sent her, and she wants to make up. She calls and says that she wants to meet his family. Drew had just told the family that he was leaving. But now he is forced to offer more money to have them pretend to be his family in front of his girlfriend, and her parents. The old man playing Grandpa couldn't show up, so his understudy comes over. Alicia comes home and apologizes to Drew. She kisses him. As soon as she leaves, his (ex) girlfriend walks in and they end up kissing too. Alicia sees him. Alicia decides to get even. She plays along with the family, making cutting remarks and finally causes Drew to lose it. He rants about how they were just making out in the kitchen. Then he tried to cover by saying they're a very affectionate family. Meanwhile the son is upstairs. "Grandpa" had come in while he was looking at porn and they found a website that was posting the pictures that Mrs. Valco had gotten taken. She didn't know they were being posted in that way, of course, but the son is frozen in shock. The whole family (girlfriend and her parents included) come walking in and see the screen. Everyone freaks out. The parents of the girlfriend finally say that they've seen enough, and they all storm out. Then Mr. Valco storms out saying he's staying at a hotel. Drew goes back home to his huge empty apartment. Mr. Valco shows up. Drew stills owes them money. Drew writes a check and then they talk about how Mr. Valco wishes that he didn't separate from his wife. Drew mentions that he still has the ticket to the performance of Scrooge ("Grandpa" had given the entire family tickets to his performance as Mr. Scrooge earlier on). They go, not knowing if his family will be there. They are. Mr. Valco and Mrs. Valco make up. Drew hooks the brother up with a cute girl in the audience. When he goes outside, he finds Alicia. They kiss and make up. The ex and her parents drive by and witness it, in all its open-mouthed glory.

It's the end of the seventies. Hippies are assimilating, women are becoming aware and men are becoming confused and ineffective. Don't expect to be able to keep track of all the names. It's the end of the 1970s. Hippies are assimilating, women are raising their consciousness, and men are becoming confused and ineffectual. Don't expect to be able to keep track of all the names, or who's sleeping with whom. This movie very skillfully conveys the hopeless muddle through which the many characters move as they try to find themselves. —Molly Malloy <mailcall@kiva.net>

Navin R. Johnson (Steve Martin), a homeless bum, directly addresses the camera and tells his story. Navin is the adopted white son of African American sharecroppers in Mississippi, who grows to adulthood naively unaware of his obvious adoption. The large family lived in a small shack. The family includes mother (Mabel King), father (Richard Ward), brother Taj (Dick Anthony Williams), sister Elvira (Ren Woods), Grandma Johnson (Frances E. Williams) and many more. He stands out in his family not just because of his skin color, but also because of his utter lack of rhythm when his adopted family plays spirited blues music. 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. One night, he hears the staid and starchy Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra song called "Crazy Rhythm" on the radio and his feet spontaneously begin to move with the urge to dance. He sees this as a calling (and believes that this is the kind of music that inspires him to go out into the world and be somebody) and decides to hitchhike to St. Louis, from where the song was broadcast. On the way, he stops at a motel, where a dog wakes him up by barking at his door. Navin thinks the dog is trying to warn of a fire and decides to name the dog "Lifesaver." He wakes up all the other hotel guests to rescue them, but when everyone realizes it was a false alarm, one Asian man angrily suggests he call the dog "Shithead," which Navin takes literally. Navin takes a lift from several motorists and eventually reaches St. Louis. Navin gets a job (and a place to sleep) at a gas station owned by Mr. Harry Hartounian (Jackie Mason). Harry pays Navin $1.10 per hour. Navin makes it a habit of sending his savings back home at regular intervals. Over a period of time Harry starts to trust Navin and even leaves him in charge of the gas station when he goes out on date with his wife. A car full of thieves rolls in to buy some gas. Navin says that they have to pay by credit card as he is all alone and the owner has asked him not to expose the cash at the gas station to customers. Navin realizes that the credit card is stolen. Navin calls the cops but then attaches a thick rope to the axle of the car and the other end to the wall of a nearby church. When the thieves realize that they have been made, they try to drive away, bringing down the church wall. He's thrilled to find that he's listed in the local phone book, as his name is "in print" for the first time. Not long after, a gun-wielding lunatic (M. Emmet Walsh) randomly flips through the phone book and picks "Johnson, Navin R." as his next victim. As the madman watches through his rifle scope, waiting for a clear shot, Navin fixes the slippery glasses of a customer, Stan Fox (Bill Macy), by adding a handle and a nose brake. The customer, Stan Fox, is an inventor who promises to try to market the device to split the profits 50/50 with Navin, then departs. Seizing his chance, the crazed sniper tries to kill Navin, but fails, hitting the oil cans in the station window and a soft-drink machine. The lunatic chases Navin to a traveling carnival, where Navin hides out, eventually getting a job with SJM Fiesta Shows as a weight guesser. While employed there, Navin meets an intimidating daredevil biker named Patty Bernstein (Catlin Adams) and has a sexual relationship with her, finally realizing what his "special purpose" (his euphemism for his penis) is for. Later, while operating a miniature railway, he meets a cosmetologist named Marie Kimble (Bernadette Peters) and arranges a date with her. Patty confronts them, but Marie knocks her out. While courting, Navin and Marie walk along the beach and sing "Tonight You Belong to Me", with Navin playing the ukulele and Marie on the cornet. Navin and Marie fall in love, but Marie reluctantly decides to leave him because of his lack of financial security. She writes a note and slips out while Navin is in the bath. 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. His glasses invention, now called the Opti-Grab, is selling big and he's entitled to half of the profits. Stan gives him a check for $250,000 as the first installment on his share of the profits. Now extremely rich, he finds and marries Marie, and they buy an extravagant mansion. Their life becomes one of splendor and non-stop partying. However, motion-picture director Carl Reiner (playing himself) files a class action lawsuit against Navin, claiming that the invention caused his eyes to be crossed and as a result, the death of a stunt driver in the film he was making. Nearly ten million other people have the same complaint (including the judge and prosecution) and are awarded $10 million in damages. Bankrupt, depressed, and now homeless, he abandons Marie and is soon living on the streets. He storms out into the street after yelling at and blaming Marie. Seeing how callous and superficial they've become, Marie wears her tattered dress from the beach, and regrets requiring Navin to be rich. His story now told, he resigns himself to a life of misery and memories of Marie, but to his amazed joy, she suddenly appears, along with Navin's family, and some more good news: Having carefully invested the small sums of money he sent home throughout the film, they've become wealthy themselves. They pick him up off the street, and he and Marie move back home into the Johnsons' new house - a much larger but identical version of their old, small shack. Once again Navin dances on the porch to folk songs, this time with perfect rhythm.

A grumpy semi-retired private investigator partners with a quirky female client to catch the people who murdered his partner. Ira Wells is an aged retired Los Angeles, California based private investigator who comes out of retirement when his former partner, Harry Regan, shows up on his doorstep with a bullet wound to the gut and dies. Ira determines to find out who killed Harry and is then contacted by another long-time acquaintance, Charlie Hatter (a down-on-his luck Hollywood hack/bartender) about Harry's last case. Harry's client was Margo Sterling, a former client of Charlie's who is a flaky, penniless new-age actress, agent, and dress maker. She hired Harry to retrieve her missing cat, Winston, who is being held ransom by an acquaintance named Brian Hemphill who stole Winston because Margo was late on paying back a loan. Amidst all this, Ira has to figure out what would be the reason for someone to kill Harry. —Huggo / Hans Delbruck