Drowning in debt as he's about to get married, a bright but meek salesman receives a mysterious phone call informing him that he's on a hidden-camera game show where he must execute 13 tasks to receive a multi-million dollar cash prize.
Detective James Quinlan has left his alcoholic wife, sprouting a bloom of insecurity, anger and self-motivation within him to expose the corrupt police force that surrounds him. He abandons his straight life to join his partner Detective Church in order to get on the inside of the circle of double-agents. He secretly sides with a reporter and an Internal Affairs lawyer to expose them to the press.
Sully is a rascally ne'er-do-well approaching retirement age. While he is pressing a worker's compensation suit for a bad knee, he secretly works for his nemesis, Carl, and flirts with Carl's young wife Toby. Sully's long- forgotten son and family have moved back to town, so Sully faces unfamiliar family responsibilities. Meanwhile, Sully's landlady's banker son plots to push through a new development and evict Sully from his mother's life.
Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.
Eight couples, four uncouplings, two weddings, two graves, an angry father, a grieving couple, love, sex, heartache, and a dog. Penniless kids Oscar and Chloe meet at Bradley's coffee shop, fall in love, and share their dreams. Bradley's wife falls for another woman when he's not paying attention. He tries again with his realtor, who's having an affair with a married man. Watching all and providing counsel is Harry, a professor on leave, married to the patient Esther and paralyzed by grief. What is love's nature: blindness in the service of procreation, heartbreak, or everything? Can Chloe, Harry, and Bradley discover the answer?
Cast: Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear, Radha Mitchell, Billy Burke, Selma Blair
Directed by Robert Benton