Sweet and light

Chicago Sun Times copy editor Josie Gellar (25), who was desperate to graduate from perfectionist copy editor to reporter, gets her chance when the goody owner orders the editor to cover the high-school scene by undercover. Josie, who was a frustrated, ridiculed nerd, gets a popular make-over from her drop-out, naturally funny brother Rob Geller. Both siblings find love and joys of youth again. But in Josie's case, it's sensitive bachelor teacher Sam Coulson, who enjoys sophisticated conversation. As the publication deadline approaches, the price of blowing their cover seems ever more daunting, yet inevitable unless she sacrifices her career.

Harry and Sally meet when she gives him a ride to New York after they both graduate from the University of Chicago. The film jumps through their lives as they both search for love, but fail, bumping into each other time and time again. Finally a close friendship blooms between them, and they both like having a friend of the opposite sex. But then they are confronted with the problem: "Can a man and a woman be friends, without sex getting in the way?"

Melanie Parker, an architect and mother of Sammy, and Jack Taylor, a newspaper columnist and father of Maggie, are both divorced. They meet one morning when overwhelmed Jack is left unexpectedly with Maggie and forgets that Melanie was to take her to school. As a result, both children miss their school field trip and are stuck with the parents. The two adults project their negative stereotypes of ex-spouses on each other, but end up needing to rely on each other to watch the children as each must save his job. Humor is added by Sammy's propensity for lodging objects in his nose and Maggie's tendency to wander.

In London, Iris Simpkins writes a wedding column in a newspaper and nurtures an unrequited love for her colleague Jasper Bloom. Near Christmas, she is informed that Jasper is engaged to marry another colleague, and her life turns upside down. In Los Angeles, the movie-trailers maker Amanda Woods has just split with her unfaithful boyfriend Ethan and wants to forget him. Through a house exchange website, Amanda impulsively swaps her mansion for Iris' cottage in Surrey for the holidays. While in Surrey, Amanda meets Iris' brother and book editor Graham and they fall in love with each other. Meanwhile, Iris meets her new next door neighbor the ninety year old screenplay writer Arthur, who helps her retrieve her self-esteem, and the film composer Miles, with whom she falls in love.

Harry Sanborn is an aged music industry exec with a fondness for younger women like Marin, his latest trophy girlfriend. Things get a little awkward when Harry suffers a heart attack at the home of Marin's mother Erica. Left in the care of Erica and his doctor, a love triangle starts to take shape.

Destiny. Faith (Marisa Tomei) believes that two soul-mates can be united if they find each other. From the Ouija board, she has found the name of her missing half, and it is D-A-M-O-N B-R-A-D-L-E-Y. Later, at the carnival, the fortune teller sees the name Damon Bradley in the Crystal Ball and Faith is convinced. She is told that "You make your own destiny,...don't wait for it to come to you", but she is looking for Damon. 14 years later, she is engaged to a dull podiatrist and plans to marry until she gets a call from one of his classmates who is on his way to Venice, Italy. The classmate is Damon Bradley. Rushing to the airport to see her soul-mate, she misses him and the plane, but decides, then and there, to go after him. So Faith and her sister-in-law Kate both board the next plane for Italy hoping to find her Damon.

After his wife Maggie passes away, Sam Baldwin and his 8-year-old son Jonah relocate from Chicago to Seattle to escape the grief associated with Maggie's death. Eighteen months later Sam is still grieving and can't sleep. Although Jonah misses his mother, he wants his father to get a new wife despite Sam having not even contemplated dating again. On Christmas Eve, Sam (on Jonah's initiative) ends up pouring his heart out on a national radio talk show about his magical and perfect marriage to Maggie, and how much he still misses her. Among the many women who hear Sam's story and fall in love with him solely because of it is Annie Reed, a Baltimore-based newspaper writer. Annie's infatuation with Sam's story and by association Sam himself is despite being already engaged. But Annie's relationship with her straight-laced fiancé Walter is unlike her dream love life in the movie

A brightly-colored, light-hearted homage to the early-1960s sex comedies that starred Rock Hudson and Doris Day. The story follows a best-selling female advice author who has all the answers until a sly journalist playboy starts asking the questions.

J.C. Wiatt is a successful New York business woman known around town as the "tiger lady." She gets news of an inheritance from a relative from another country and off the bat she suspects it's money. Well it's not money, it's a baby girl. At first she doesn't accept until the lady that gives the baby to her has to catch her flight. J.C. is now stuck with an annoying baby girl. Her boyfriend doesn't like the idea of a baby living with them and he leaves her. J.C. has enough of it and takes her to meet a family ready to adopt her. She leaves but hears the baby cry while walking away and has to go back. The baby is too attached to her now and won't let her go. Later, her baby gets into mischief which causes her to get fired. Now, she sets her eyes on an old two story cottage in Vermont to get out of the New York life. When she arrives, the house needs more help than originally thought. She gets bored one snowy day and decides to make apple sauce. Her baby loves it and she decides to sell it. Pretty soon everyone wants some of the baby apple sauce. J.C. hits it big and falls in love with a local veterinarian. Was this fate or destiny?

Frances Mayes is a San Francisco-based literature professor, literary reviewer and author, who is struggling in writing her latest book. Her outwardly perfect and stable life takes an unexpected turn when her husband files for divorce. He wants to marry the woman with whom he is having an affair. Frances supported her husband financially as he was writing his own book, and he sues her for alimony despite her financial difficulties. And he wants to keep the house. Frances eventually accepts her best friend Patti's offer of a vacation, a gay tour of Tuscany which Patti and her lesbian partner Grace originally purchased for themselves before Patti found out that she is pregnant. The gift is a means to escape dealing with the divorce, from which Patti feels Frances may never recover emotionally without some intervention. Feeling that Patti's assessment may be correct in that she has too much emotional baggage ever to return to San Francisco, Frances, while in Tuscany, impulsively ditches the tour to purchase an aged villa, which ends up being a fixer-upper. Frances has many obstacles in eking out a productive and happy life in her new surroundings, that happy life which she hopes will eventually include rediscovering romantic love. In a discussion with sympathetic real estate agent Signor Martini, Frances outlines what emotionally she wants to accomplish with the villa, despite none of those items in a substantive material sense currently being in her life. In response, Martini tells her the story of a set of railroad tracks that were laid between Vienna and Venice before an engine that could make the trek being built, a train which now regularly travels the route. The question becomes whether Frances, in going through the process, will be laying another Vienna to Venice track, and if so whether that end product emotionally will be exactly as she envisions.

When brought together at a family event, two exes find themselves oddly attracted to each other after ten years of divorce. Although the couple think that this affair will stay in a different state, it brings itself back to their own city and disrupts their personal lives. While the couple still maintain other romances, they cannot help but to continue with their affair.

On a flight home to Chicago for a family wedding, childhood friends Josh and Molly innocently agree to fake a wedding engagement to make Josh's dying father happy. Things quickly get out of hand with their two boisterous families, and a series of events causes them to pretend to be a couple and start planning a phony wedding.

New York columnist Ike Graham elaborates, for once without full fact checking, the story he heard from a bar mate of Maryland small town girl Maggie Carpenter, who left several grooms at the altar, taking off without warning or serious reason. Fearing a legal case from Maggie, Ike's editor and ex Ellie fires him. Staff buddy Fisher cues Ike to seek his job back (or earn another) by attempting to prove the alleged inaccuracies and/or writing a priceless follow-up piece. So his sports-car heads for her home Hale, where she runs a garage and designs glassware. His charms and journalistic nose get everyone to open up and reveal her embarrassing past before she can swear people to silence, from her three dumped grooms and family to her overconfident present groom, high school coach Bob Kelly. In the process, Maggie finds hating him as hard as tempting, while Ike develops a strange appreciation for the maverick, until even Bob sees reason to get jealous.

Nursing a secret and hopeless crush on the handsome commuter who passes her booth every day, the charming loner and Chicago "L" ticket seller, Lucy, is about to have a second chance at love. During one seemingly ordinary Christmas shift, Lucy witnesses the object of her desire falling off the platform, and in one of those spur-of-the-moment decisions, she saves him from certain death, only to be mistaken for his fiancée at the hospital. As Lucy enjoys the unexpected stroke of good luck, unable to tell the truth to his welcoming family, unforeseen romantic affairs further complicate matters. Now, the comatose patient's suspicious brother, Jack, thinks he's onto something. Will Lucy face the consequences of what happened while the beautiful stranger was sleeping?

The film opens with a loving husband and wife preparing for a very important fund raising dinner. The evening ends with the loss of the wife. In a hospital a weak young woman who may die soon if she can not get a new heart. Jump ahead one year the young woman received a heart and is trying to adjust to a life no longer counted by hours or days, she can actually make plans. The grieving husband and his dog are still trying to adjust to life without his wife. His friends keep trying to pry him from his "work is my life" existence by setting him up on blinds dates. Finally he actually shows up for one at an Irish-Italian restaurant where he finds himself more attracted to the waitress than his blind date. He finds an excuse to return to the restaurant in hopes of seeing the waitress again, there's just something attractive about her. Unknown to both the attraction they both feel for one another is Grace has the heart of Bob's dead wife. What can you say after that! Carroll O'Connor says exactly the right thing to Bob after he finds out this ironic coincidence.

Benjamin Barry is an advertising executive competing with two female co-workers for a major campaign for a diamond merchant. He cuts a deal with his competitors that the account is his if he can make a woman of their choice fall in love with him in 10 days. In comes Andie Anderson who, in turn, is writing a story on how to lose a guy in 10 days as a bet with her boss to be allowed to write more substantial stories. With a hidden agenda in each camp, will either party be able to complete their mission?

Twelve year old Marcus Brewer lives with his chronically depressed single mother, Fiona Brewer. Both Fiona and Marcus beat to their own respective drummers. Marcus will do whatever he can to make his depressed mother happy, even if it causes himself grief. As such, he realizes that he is perceived as different than most kids, as even the self-professed weird kids don't want to hang out with him as he is the target of bullying. Part of the taunts against him are the fact that he sings and speaks to himself without even realizing that he is doing it. Meanwhile, thirty-eight year old Will Freeman is a slacker who has lived comfortably off the royalties of a song written by his deceased father, and as such has never had to work a day in his life. He is a solitary man who places himself as the first and only priority in life. He comes across the idea that dating single moms meets his selfish carnal needs. It is in this capacity that Will meets Marcus, as one of Will's single mother conquests, Suzie, is friends with the Brewers. Trying to escape his life but wanting Will to date Fiona, Marcus infiltrates Will's life, much to Will's chagrin. Will slowly begins to realize that Marcus is more than just a nuisance, but rather someone who needs some guidance navigating through the trials of adolescence and the trials of dealing with a suicidal mother, and perhaps he can be a small part of providing that direction. Conversely, Marcus may be able to show Will the path to becoming a real adult.

Janeane Garofalo plays Dr. Abby Barnes, the "Truth About Cats and Dogs" radio question-and-answer show host who unwittingly entices a listener over the radio with her soothing voice and personality. This listener, Brian, tries to meet the Abby from the radio, but Noelle, played by Uma Thurman, is mistaken for the real thing when Brian comes to the studio. Instead of clearing things up right away, the self-conscious Abby allows her best friend, Noelle, a tall, stunning blonde, to take her place for a while. Abby takes on the made-up persona of Donna, while thinking Brian would never go for her, a short, cute, brunette, who thinks she's unattractive. As the real Abby woos Brian over the phone and radio, Noelle, the pseudo-Abby, takes her place in the flesh. As time goes on, Abby feels more and more confident that Brian would rather have the beautiful Noelle than the simply attractive Abby.