New Yorkers Paul Bratter and Corie Bratter née Banks have just gotten married. He is a stuffed shirt just starting his career as a lawyer. She is an independently minded free spirit who prides herself on doing the illogical purely out of a sense of adventure, such acts as walking through Washington Square Park barefoot when it's 17°F outside. Their six day honeymoon at the Plaza Hotel shows that they can get to know each other easily in the biblical sense. But they will see if they can get to know each other in their real life when they move into their first apartment, a cozy (in other words, small), slightly broken down top floor unit in a five story walk-up. While Corie joyfully bounds up and down the stairs, Paul, always winded after the fact, hates the fact of having to walk up the six flights of stairs, if one includes the stairs that comprise the outside front stoop. Beyond the issues with the apartment itself, Paul and Corie will have to deal with an odd assortment of neighbors, most specifically eccentric senior Victor Velasco, who lives in the unusual attic and who would like to consider himself a dirty old man. Corie, worried about her single straight-laced mother Ethel Banks, wants to set her up with Victor. Without Corie or Paul truly realizing it, Ethel and Victor as a twosome is as illogical as Corie and Paul. What happens between Ethel and Victor may be a predictor if Corie and Paul's marriage can make it in the long run.

Joe Bradley is a reporter for the American News Service in Rome, a job he doesn't much like as he would rather work for what he considers a real news agency back in the States. He is on the verge of getting fired when he, sleeping in and getting caught in a lie by his boss Hennessy, misses an interview with HRH Princess Ann, who is on a goodwill tour of Europe, Rome only her latest stop. However, he thinks he may have stumbled upon a huge scoop. Princess Ann has officially called off all her Rome engagements due to illness. In reality, he recognizes the photograph of her as being the young well but simply dressed drunk woman he rescued off the street last night (as he didn't want to turn her into the police for being a vagrant), and who is still in his small studio apartment sleeping off her hangover. What Joe doesn't know is that she is really sleeping off the effects of a sedative given to her by her doctor to calm her down after an anxiety attack, that anxiety because she hates her regimented life where she has no freedom and must always do and say the politically correct things, not what is truly on her mind or in her heart. In wanting just a little freedom, she seized upon a chance opportunity to escape from the royal palace where she was staying, albeit with no money in her pockets. Joe believes he can get an exclusive interview with her without she even knowing that he's a reporter or that he's interviewing her. As Joe accompanies "Anya Smith" - her name as she tells him in trying to hide her true identity - around Rome on her incognito day of freedom somewhat unaware that the secret service is searching for her, along for the ride is Joe's photographer friend, Irving Radovich, who Joe has tasked with clandestinely taking photographs of her, those photos to accompany the story. As the day progresses, Joe and Ann slowly start to fall for each other. Their feelings for each other affect what both decide to do, Ann with regard to her royal duties, Joe with regard to the story, and both with regard to if there is a future for them together.

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.

2002 film directed by Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz

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.

Harvard educated lawyer Lucy Kelson, following in the footsteps of her lawyer parents, uses her career for social activism. She hides any sense of femininity behind her work. George Wade is the suave public face of the Manhattan-based Wade Corporation, a development firm that Lucy routinely opposes and whose true head is George's profit-oriented brother, Howard Wade. George, who has a reputation as a lady's man, has had as his legal counsel a series of beautiful female lawyers with questionable credentials, they who have more primarily acted as his casual sex partners. Needing a real lawyer, he offers Lucy the job of his legal counsel on a chance meeting. Despite warnings from her parents in working for the "enemy", Lucy, who has no intention of being the latest in his bed partners, accepts the job as she feels she can do more good from the inside, and as George, as part of the job offer, promises not to demolish a community center in a heritage building as part of a development project near her childhood Coney Island home where her parents still live. Although Lucy is able to effect the type of change she wanted from this position, she finds she cannot deal with George's expectations of her, namely being his primary confidante and advisor at all hours of the day and night, mostly about issues she considers frivolous. As such, she gives him two weeks notice, although she promises to help George find her replacement. As Lucy begins to review resumes, George himself unilaterally decides to hire June Carver, a fellow Harvardite, but who seems to have her sights set on George as both a boss and personal partner. As June begins to replace Lucy in seemingly all aspects of George's life, Lucy begins to realize that she herself has fallen for George. However, Lucy's feelings for George and her attempts to re-ingratiate herself into George's life are placed into jeopardy when she learns of a Wade Corporation decision against her basic sensibilities.

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?

ROM COMS (to watch)