Caroline Aaron

A cantor's life is upturned when his grade school teacher becomes his new adult Bat Mitzvah student.

The film follows the Wellers, A dynamic New York City family as they come to terms with themselves and each other. Eleanor Weller (Hunter) is a therapist who is not coping well with changes in her personal life, including a recent divorce and the growing instability of her daughter. Her ex-husband Adam (Shalhoub) is a once promising playwright whose career has been on a steady decline for many years. When Adam receives a manuscript written by a dead friend, he seizes an opportunity to transform his life.

Elizabeth Masterson (Reese Witherspoon), an emergency room physician in San Francisco whose work is everything. Elizabeth loves gardens and that is her designated "Happy Place", where she goes mentally for rest and relaxation. She has been on her shift for 23 hours straight. Despite everything, Elizabeth always has a smile on her face and is friendly with patients. She has no life outside of her work and sometimes she feels lonely because of that. Dr Walsh (Ron Canada) confirms Elizabeth's position at the hospital as an attending physician, which is why she was working so hard. She gets in a car crash while on her way to a blind date at her sister's. Three months later, landscape architect David Abbott (Mark Ruffalo), needing a fresh start after his wife's death, takes a sublet on Elizabeth's apartment. David has looked for many apartments but was not able to find something that he liked. Either they were too modern, too Victorian, and so on. The flier for Elizabeth's apartment flew off a notice board and fell on top of David. The apartment was only available for a month, but David likes it as the apartment comes with a roof, a couch and sky windows. David spends his time watching old videos and drinking beer on the couch. Elizabeth begins to appear in the apartment, and both are confused. She thinks he is a squatter, and he thinks she broke in. David tells his therapist friend Jack that he is hallucinating a person. They soon realize she moves through walls and objects. Elizabeth does not know who she is, and insists she is not dead. David unsuccessfully tries to have her spirit exorcised using priests, oriental remedies and even Ghostbusters. As only David can see and hear her, others think he is hallucinating and talking to himself. Elizabeth asks him to help her discover who she really is. David talks to her neighbors but they did not know her. David enlists the help of a psychic bookstore clerk, Darryl (Jon Heder), who says Elizabeth is not really dead. He also tells David he has clearly got a blocked heart and needs to let go of the woman who was previously in his life. Darryl says that David has dark aura around him, and it is killing him. When Elizabeth says he should get over being dumped, he storms out, and Darryl tells Elizabeth to not disrespect the dead. She finds David and he explains about the death of his wife Laura. Elizabeth won't allow David to have a drink and possesses his body to make him throw his drink and walk out of the car in front of Jack. David agrees to help Elizabeth to find out who she is and checks with all her neighbors. But they have no recollection of Elizabeth, as she was never home. Elizabeth tells David where she keeps the spare key to her apartment (underneath the fire extinguisher in the apartment lobby). They visit the dry-cleaners as well but get no clues. They walk around the neighborhood to see if Elizabeth can recognize a place that she used to visit frequently. Checking a restaurant she recognizes, a man has a medical emergency, so Elizabeth helps David save his life. Suddenly, she remembers being a doctor, and they go to the nearest hospital, where it all comes flooding back. Dr. Fran Lo (Rosalind Chao), her mentor, takes him to Elizabeth, who is in a coma. When David touches her hand, Elizabeth feels it, meaning she is still connected to her body. Elizabeth's sister Abby (Dina Waters) arrives, and Dr. Brett Rushton (Ben Shenkman) - Elizabeth's rival - notifies her that Elizabeth signed a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order. He asks her to sign off on disconnecting life support, and she says she will consider it. David and Elizabeth bond. When he takes her to a beautiful, landscaped garden he designed, she tells him she senses she has been there before. In fact, she was dreaming of the garden (in the opening scenes of the film), while catnapping during a long shift. When David is told he has been offered a long-term lease, he realizes Elizabeth will be taken off life support. He tries to prevent it by going to Abby's to tell her that she is communicating with him. While there, Elizabeth discovers that her niece Lily can see her. David begs Abby to keep her alive, but she has already signed the papers, with life support ending the next day. As a last-ditch effort, David blurts out Abby's secret from her wedding day, freaking her out so she drives him out of her house. Elizabeth opts to spend her last night with David in the apartment. The next morning, he is determined to prevent her death by stealing her body from the hospital. He enlists his friend and therapist Jack (Donal Logue) to help. It turns out Jack is Abby's former college boyfriend, and the two had set up David and Elizabeth for the blind date on the night of the crash; David can see her because they were meant to meet. He admits to Jack and Elizabeth that he loves her. Security guards catch them trying to steal Elizabeth's body. As they pull Jack away from her, her breathing tube comes off. Elizabeth is now dying, and David frantically kisses her body, while her spirit fades away. Her heartbeat returns and she awakens from the coma. She recognizes Abby, but not David, and he sadly leaves. Sometime later, Elizabeth moves back into her apartment. Drawn to the roof, she finds David, who has transformed it into a landscaped garden. He reveals he had gotten in using the spare key her spirit had shown him. When Elizabeth asks for her key back, their hands touch, her memory of the events during her coma are restored, and they kiss happily. The final scene fades away from the rooftop to show Darryl staring into a snow globe, happy with "seeing" how things have turned out.

Joe Dirt (David Spade) is an irrationally optimistic, 30-ish, southern-rock and muscle-car-loving, mullet-sporting, lovable loser working as a janitor at an L.A. radio station. Finding Joe an irresistable target for his sarcastic on-air wit, a Howard Stern-like deejay named Zander Kelly (Dennis Miller), puts Joe on the air to tell his story. For three days Zander and a growing legion of listeners are surprised to find themselves captivated, delighted, and occasionally repelled by Joe's incredible tale of his search to find the parents who referred to him as "Joe Dirt" (rather than by his real last name, which he can no longer remember) and left him sitting in a garbage can at the Grand Canyon when he was 8 years old. Thorughout the film, the story reverts for short periods back to the KXLA studio for dialogue between Joe and Zander. Pivotal to Joe's story is the past relationship he reveals between himself and Brandy (Brittany Daniel), a beautiful farm girl from his adopted hometown of Silvertown, Idaho. Joe feels that Brandy and his dog, Charlie, were the only real friends he ever had. After living in and leaving a series of bizarre foster homes, Joe met Brandy one winter when he was living in the woods outside Silvertown and Charlie's testicles became frozen to the front porch of Brandy's house. Brandy helped Joe and Charlie and for the next few years the three spent most of their time together. Believing that Brandy is "too hot" to ever love a guy like him, Joe is blind to the fact that she obviously has very real feelings for him. Complicating their relationship is Brandy's alcoholic father (Joe Don Baker) and the local Trans-Am-driving bully, Robby (Kid Rock). Brandy's father kills Joe's dog after it fails in a Lassie-like mission to free the father when he gets stuck on railroad tracks, resulting in the loss of his leg. The death of Charlie causes Joe to feel that he needs to take up the search for his mother and father. Joe is certain they did not leave him intentionally and must be looking for him too. His travels take him first to a town where Joe gets a job wearing a sandwich board advertising a local dental clinic. As he is working, Joe meets a kind older woman (Angela Paton) who is just about to put a mint condition 1969 Plymouth Hemi GTX convertible for sale. Admiring her car Joe tells her part of his story. Having recently lost her abusive police sketch artist husband to a tragic "accident" ("I pushed him into the woodchipper," she whispers), she sells Joe the car for the change in his pockets. She also gives him the idea of hiring a sketch artist to make pictures of his parents to aid in his search. Before Joe can enjoy his dream car, he is sent to the roof of the dental clinic to secure a promotional hot air balloon. While Joe is in the balloon's basket, high winds cause the balloon to break free and Joe sails away. He is eventually knocked from the basket when it collides with an oil derrick in the Dakotas. Needing $360 to hire a sketch artist, Joe sees it as a cosmic sign that his search will succeed when he discovers the oil company is paying $360 dollars a week for work on the rig. Joe is a disaster as a rough neck and an outcast from the other workers, resulting in him being both fired after one week and beaten up by fellow worker Zeke (Lee Walker). Joe next spends the night in what he mistakenly believes is a circus tent. It is really a fumigation tent. The the next day, high on insecticide fumes, Joe wastes his $360 on sketches of what appear to be Father Time and serial killer Richard Ramirez. Joe next decides to locate his parents through the use of an "Indian tracker." On a local reservation he encounters and befriends Kicking Wing (Adam Beach), the young proprietor of an unsuccessful roadside fireworks stand and aspiring veterinarian. Joe, who it appears is quite an afficianado on the topic of fireworks, encourages Kicking Wing to diversify into more spectacular wares than the "snakes and sparklers" he currently offers. While at Kicking Wings, Joe discovers what he believes to be an atomic bomb and, strapping it to his back with duct tape, uses it to blackmail a Grand Canyon tour bus company out of its list of passengers on the day his parents left him at the canyon. Joe intends to use the list to find people with photos that might show him or his parents. Joe gets the lists but the "bomb" turns out to be an RV septic tank and Joe ends up covered in rotten sewage. Joe then goes to work for a traveling carnival as a means to travel the country tracking down people on the list. Back in the town from which he left in the balloon, he meets the seductive Jill (Jaime Pressley), a single mother who shares his affinity for southern rock, Hemis and mullets. Joe goes to the local impound yard to retrieve his GTX where a greasy attendant (Kevin Nealon) informs him the impound fee is over $3000. Unable to pay, Joe buys a rusty, fume-spewing 69 Dodge Daytona and informs Jill that his real car is unavailable because he's having a "footprint gas pedal installed." After making out with Jill, Joe discovers that she may actually be his long lost sister and he is faced with the decision of whether to go ahead and sleep with her. He discovers she is not in fact his sister and the rocking headboard indicates the two egage in some vigorous action. At this point the story reverts from the past to the present and Joe makes a phone call from the LA radio station to Brandy. He leaves a message on her machine saying, "Hey, Brandy, it's Joe. I'm out in L.A. They got me on the radio station telling my story to everybody. I didn't get to the sad part yet. I'm guessing you had reasons for doing what you did. And I guess I'm just calling to say goodbye. I miss you, Brandy." Joe then continues to tell his story to Zander. Joe leaves Jill to continue on his cross-country effort to track down every person on the bus list and look at their photos. This results in Joe being held prisoner in Indiana by "Buffalo Bob" a fishnet stocking weaing psychopath who intends to turn Joe's skin into an overcoat (ala "Silence of the Lambs"). Joe is rescued, and among Bob's photographs Joe discovers one which shows his parents' car with a Louisiana license plate. Joe goes to New Orleans and takes a job as a janitor at an elementary school. Here he meets fellow janitor Clem (Christopher Walken), whose past is a little unclear. When a student accidentally makes "killer mustard gas" and the class is nearly overcome, Clems rescues them. In a clear attempt to avoid the spotlight he tells everyone it was Joe. At the resulting news conference Joe tells reporters of his search for his parents and also reveals that it was actually Clem who was the hero. That night mafia hitmen arrive at Clem's house. Joe comes to the scene the next morning to find police removing the dead bodies of Clem and his attackers. As Joe mourns over the covered body of Clem, Clem reveals to Joe that he is not actually dead but is being relocated again as part of the Federal witness protection program. Joe takes a new job at an alligator farm and befriends the farm's owner (Rosanne Arquette) who inherited it from her parents when they were killed by a gator. She hates her life there and wishes a man would come along and take her away. Joe enthralls tourists with his death-defying act of placing his head into the mouth of a huge gator. This of course results in Joe nearly being eaten. As Joe is reviving from his encounter with the gator, he remembers that his real last name is "Nunamaker." With this final bit of information Joe learns his parents were from Baton Rouge. Joe arrives at his parents' home to find it condemned and abandoned. A backwoods Cajun (Blake Clark) tries to remind Joe that "home is where you make it," but Joe is unable to understand him through the thick accent. Joe is heart-broken. As he is lying on the ground staring at the moon he realizes he had a home in Silvertown with Brandy and that he needs to return. He calls her and gets the answering machine. He leaves a message saying he is returning, but the message is deleted by Robby. As Joe walks into Silvertown he is met by Robby and his toadies. Robby tells Joe that he is marrying Brandy and that Brandy found Joe's parents in California. He says Brandy doesn't want to see Joe. Joe doesn't beleive this but Robby shows Joe a note, signed by Brandy with X's and O's, saying she found Joe's parents but that Robby shouldn't tell Joe if he calls. Joe walks away pretending not to be crying while Robby continues to insult him. The scene returns to Zander Kelly's studio. Zander is incensed that Brandy would treat Joe that way and insists on getting Brandy on the phone. Brandy is put on the air and Zander confronts her about her note to Robby. Brandy admits she wrote it but only because she wanted to tell Joe in person, and months went by and Joe never came home. Brandy then tells Joe that his parents were killed the day they were at the Grand Canyon. She says Joe should come home to Silvertown and let her take care of him. Joe is next shown as having become a media sensation. Before returning to Silvertown he makes an appearance on the television show "TRL" with Carson Daly. While Joe is on TRL a women calls in and claims to be his mother. Joe believes the call is legitimate and he goes to a trailer in Simi Valley, CA, to meet his parents. Joe discovers that his mother (Caroline Aaron) and father (Fred Ward) are alive, but that they left him on purpose and have only contacted him to get publicity for their online business. Joe storms out of his parents' trailer. Joe threatens to kill himself by jumping off a bridge in LA. The crowd and police implore him to reconsider and to come down from the bridge railing. Joe says that he has no one and that everyone lies to him. Brandy arrives and Joe confronts her about lying to him about his parents' death. Brandy admits the lie but explains that after she met his parents and discovered what horrible people they were she wanted to protect Joe from them. Brandy expresses her love for Joe and her desire to marry him and start a family. At that moment Joe is roped by a policemen with a bungee cord. This causes Joe to fall off the bridge. The bungee cord breaks his fall, but as he rebounds he hits his head on the bridge and is knocked unconscious. Joe awakens in Silvertown to find Kicking Wing, Clem and the alligator farm owner all standing by his bed with Brandy. Kicking Wing has become a successful fireworks entrepeneur based on Joe's advice and Clem has taken a new name and been relocated to Silvertown. He and the farm owner are planning to be married. Brandy has also given Joe a surprising new haircut and bought a new dog, "Charlie II." Joe realizes he now has a loving family and real friends. The film ends with all five racing off in Joe's convertible, leaving Robby in a cloud of dust and gravel.

Buddy Amaral (Affleck) is an ad-man who, while waiting for his flight to meet with a client, meets a laid back family man, Greg (Goldwyn) awaiting another flight home to his family. When Buddy encounters a beautiful woman, Mimi Pager (Henstridge), and becomes enamored with her, he arranges to swap tickets and flights with Greg so that Greg gets home early and Buddy can have extra time with his new lady friend, figuring he's doing a good thing while serving his own needs. Buddy's "good deed" backfires horribly when the flight he bumped Greg to crashes, and Greg dies. Buddy is so guilt ridden over this that he eventually collapses into alcoholism. Sometime later Buddy re-emerges from rehab but guilt still haunts him, so in an attempt to redeem himself he tracks down Greg's widow, Abby, (Paltrow) and tries to help her and her children any way that he can, even though he does not tell her it was his fault her husband died. Things become complicated when the guilt-ridden ad-man and lonely widow fall in love. Buddy keeps quiet about how he met Greg at the airport and how he gave him his own ticket. But one day Mimi Pager suddenly shows up at Abby's doorstep with a video tape of her, Buddy and Greg at the airport. When she realizes the role Buddy has played, she breaks up with him. The families of the passengers on the crashed jet have taken the airline to court and Buddy must appear as a witness. At the stand he takes the opportunity to explain about the guilt he has felt ever since the crash. Abby watches the court proceedings on TV and decides that she can forgive him.

The film begins by showing the Beindorfs, mother Janet (Jamie Lee Curtis), father Ned (Kevin Pollak), Gregory whose nicknamed "Grover" (Kyle Howard), and Stacy (Amy Sakasitz), a supposedly happy family living a typical family life in the suburbs of Defiance, Ohio. It is revealed that Janet and Ned are not happy and in fact separating although they tell their children it is not a divorce. Groves's friend Matt tells him that usually it starts with a separation and ends with a divorce. He asks Groves to check for tell tale signs like who is moving out (usually mom moving out is temporary), if they are not giving reasons then there is a lot wrong and if the suitcases are already packed to estimate the seriousness of the situation. Grover is being bullied at school by TJ. It is Janet and Ned's marriage anniversary and Grover and Stacy first try to recreate their parents' honeymoon in the basement of their house, but this fails to bring any happiness into their relationship. The children then leave the basement telling their parents they must get another surprise for them upstairs. They go up, close the door, and nail it shut. They vow to keep it shut until their parents work out their problems. They removed all the tools, boarded up the windows and cut the phone line to the basement as well. The first night, Janet and Ned only spend time trying to escape the basement. The next day, the kids call in their parents sick at work and then go to school, as usual. Chief Rocco (Ray Walston) is the next-door neighbor to the Beindorf and is a retired police chief. Grover tells his best friend Matt Finley (Mooky Arizona) what he has done and T.J. Krupp (Russel Harper), the wealthy local bully, overhears the conversation. Matt goes over to the Beindorfs' house to look at the children's work and is impressed. T.J. shows up to have a look and actually installs a newer, more secure door to keep the parents trapped. TJ is almost an adult in size and is able to push Groves's parents back while Groves and Stacy install the new steel door, after removing the old wooden door. TJ and Matt then leave to collect their parents and bring them to the Beindorfs' house to lock them up as well. Matt's father Vic (Wallace Shawn) never keeps a wife for more than two years and T.J.'s father Donald (Christopher McDonald) does not treat his wife Gwenna (Sheila McCarthy) well. Matt also brings his bulldog Cosmo and his two younger brothers, Teddy and Jimmy (who come armed with sleeping bags) and T.J. brings Spot, his pet boa constrictor. When Grover asks what is going on in response to his friends setting up camp at his house, T.J. replies with "Our parents could be down there for months!" The next morning Grover goes to school, and Stacy serves breakfast to all parents in the basement. Janet and Ned almost talk Grover into letting them all out but T.J.'s father, Donald (who's an attorney), threatens him with legal action. Grover finds out that his dream girl, Brooke Figler (Jennifer Love Hewitt), is also having parental problems: her mother Cindy (Jennifer Tilly) acts like a teenager, going so far as to trying to hang out with Brooke's friends. Grover invites her to lock up Cindy with the rest of the parents. The children lock up all of their parents and begin to help them solve their problems. The kids lower a TV camera and speakers by cutting hole in the basement ceiling and having a group therapy session for the parents. The parents try to find a way out of the basement (when Ned finds the blueprints to an old laundry chute) while getting along and seeing what each of their problems are. The children also work out their differences with each other above in the house. They work together to clean up the house and act responsibly while their parents are locked up. As they get to talking, they also defend their respective parents and their quirky habits. Rocco continues to keep an eye on the house. Ned and Janet have a fight in the basement as Ned wants to cut off electricity to the house (fuse box is in the basement), while Janet feels that is negative reinforcement. The rapid turning on and off of lights is witnessed by Rocco from across the street, who calls the cops. The cops only find kids having a pajama party with TJ acting as a grown up, and leave. Janet tries to climb up the laundry chute but cannot hold on and slides right back down. The next morning, Janet's lawyer brings over the divorce papers and Grover realizes that his parents had been lying to him. Even Ned did not know that Janet had asked her lawyer to draw up divorce papers. Ned and Donald dig through the cemented window and push Vic through the hole into the backyard where Rocco sees him and calls the police again. Grover is dejected and realizes that what he did was wrong. The kids eventually give in and give up to the police and their parents are set free. It is revealed at the end that Grover's parents reconciled and took a second honeymoon to Hawaii. Matt's parents' wedding lasted past the two-year mark, and they are expecting another child. T.J.'s parents got divorced though his mom later went back to law school and they opened up a law firm together. Brooke's mother started dating other men instead of intruding on Brooke's dates. Also, Grover and Brooke became boyfriend and girlfriend, and she passionately kisses him in front of their classmates at school for a very long time, causing a slightly awkward moment for the bystanders. However, he concluded if their parents ever try to get divorced again, he might think of locking them in the attic.

New Jersey, 1950s. Two brothers run an Italian restaurant. Business is not going well as a rival Italian restaurant is out-competing them. In a final effort to save the restaurant, the brothers plan to put on an evening of incredible food. Primo and Secondo are two brothers who have emigrated from Italy to open an Italian restaurant in America. Primo is the irascible and gifted chef, brilliant in his culinary genius, but determined not to squander his talent on making the routine dishes that customers expect. Secondo is the smooth front-man, trying to keep the restaurant financially afloat, despite few patrons other than a poor artist who pays with his paintings. The owner of the nearby Pascal's restaurant, enormously successful (despite its mediocre fare), offers a solution, he will call his friend, a big-time jazz musician, to play a special benefit at their restaurant. Primo begins to prepare his masterpiece, a feast of a lifetime, for the brothers' big night.