A car salesman journeys to France and encounters an apparently lonely woman. He immediately begins to successfully woo her only to learn that she is actually a baron's wife. Fortunately, the baron believes in open marriages and winds up hiring the Englishman to teach his son (from an earlier marriage) everything about automobiles. Meanwhile the car salesman finds himself falling seriously in love with the wife. The baron really doesn't mind as he himself is involved with another.
Lucky Jackson arrives in town with his car literally in tow ready for the first Las Vegas Grand Prix - once he has the money to buy an engine. He gets the cash easily enough but mislays it when the pretty swimming pool manageress takes his mind off things. It seems he will lose both race and girl, problems made more difficult by rivalry from Elmo Mancini, fellow racer and womaniser.
In this pre-WWII German mystery-comedy, a lovely kleptomaniac with a taste for fine jewelry is unable to resist temptation. Strangely, every time she steals something, a mysterious man pays for it. A clumsy detective begins investigating and finds a crucial clue: a strongly scented woman's glove. The perfume is an expensive scent and the detective's pal realizes that it belongs to a popular nightclub singer. The friend quickly becomes enamored of the girl, but then so does her mystery man, a notorious international criminal. Eventually he gets arrested, leaving the detective's pal to move in on the singer.
Chili Palmer is a Miami mobster who gets sent to L.A. to collect a bad debt from Harry Zimm, a Hollywood producer who specializes in cheesy horror films. When Chili meets Harry's leading lady, the romantic sparks fly. After pitching his own life story as a movie idea, Chili learns that being a mobster and being a Hollywood producer really aren't all that different.
Having first lost his wife then his job as a tweed tailor, Alex Ponttin has devised a novel way to keep himself in touch with society. He admits himself into people's homes, by pretending to be a relative or an official, and persuading his victims to give him a night's free board: He finds at first a lunch at the horrible couple Dumont, where a thief follows him for a robbery. Alex spent an evening in front of TV at Marie, mother of seven children. He runs from Marie to find an evening and a new bed at the home of charming but shy lesbian Caroline and her funny lover Gloria. To save her inheritance, Caroline - accused for her homosexuality by her horrible sister Catherine - tells her aunt Amélie, that Gloria is her secretary and Alex her lover. So Alex has to present himself nude in Caroline's bed. He saves Carolines inheritance. The police officers investigating the case are so terminally stupid that Alex has little chance of being arrested.
Unemployed and recently dumped, Mitch and his buddy Sam start a revenge-for-hire business to raise the $50,000 that Sam's father needs to get a heart transplant.
Writer Alex Sheldon must finish his novel within a month. If he doesn't, he won't get paid. And, if that happens, angry Mafia types to whom he owes money will come looking for him. In order to expedite things, Alex hires typist Emma Dinsmore and begins dictating his novel. The book is about a doomed love affair between a character similar to Alex and a character named Polina Delacroix. But, as Alex falls for Emma, his work takes a different turn.
A University teacher finds three bright students and decides to teach them how to count cards to make lots of money. As they learn how to play the casinos, things get tricky when the debt owing teacher informs them that their front man wants restitution for loses in about a weeks time. The three students decide to hit all the major casinos in Ontario and Quebec until discovered.
A retired pool hustler is forced to pick up the stick again when his brother starts a game he can't finish.
The lives of Eric, an ex hockey player, and his partner Sam, are thrown into turmoil when they are forced to take in Scot, a flamboyant 11-year-old.
The eponymous wraith returns to Earth to aid his descendant, elderly Emily Stowecroft. The villains want to kick Emily and her friends out of their group home so that they can build a crooked casino. Good guy Steve Walker gets caught in the middle of the squabble after evoking Blackbeard's ghost.
Ko Chun, a renowned gambler, loses his memory in an accident and starts behaving like a child. Little Knife, an amateur gambler, offers him shelter and realizes that he has a penchant for gambling.
Flamboyantly gay Austrian television reporter Bruno stirs up trouble with unsuspecting guests and large crowds through brutally frank interviews and painfully hilarious public displays of homosexuality.
In the midst of organizing his brother Ben's wedding, Shel, a gay party planner, decides to go on strike for equal rights when he learns that Ben is behind a political speech against gay marriage.
A Chinese-American lesbian and her traditionalist mother are reluctant to go public with secret loves that clash against cultural expectations.
A Jewish teenager sets three goals: lose his virginity, become a writer, and survive World War II.
On her deathbed, a mother makes her son promise never to get married, which scars him with psychological blocks to a commitment with his girlfriend. They finally decide to tie the knot in Vegas, but a wealthy gambler arranges for the man to lose $65K in a poker game and offers to clear the debt for a weekend with his fiancée.
Set in 1959, Diner shows how five young men resist their adulthood and seek refuge in their beloved Diner. The mundane, childish, and titillating details of their lives are shared. But the golden moments pass, and the men shoulder their responsibilities, leaving the Diner behind.
Gambler Nathan Detroit has few options for the location of his big craps game. Needing $1,000 to pay a garage owner to host the game, Nathan bets Sky Masterson that Sky cannot get virtuous Sarah Brown out on a date. Despite some resistance, Sky negotiates a date with her in exchange for bringing people into her mission. Meanwhile, Nathan's longtime fiancée, Adelaide, wants him to go legit and marry her.
In several unrelated stories, the consequences of putting one's foot down – or failing to do so – are explored.