Albert Einstein helps a young man who’s in love with Einstein’s niece to catch her attention by pretending temporarily to be a great physicist.

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.

Twelve-year-old Nick lives with his Uncle Murray, a Mr.Micawber-like Dickensian character who keeps hoping something won’t turn up. What turns up is a social worker, who falls in love with Murray and a bit in love with Nick. As the child welfare people try to force Murray to become a conventional man (as the price they demand for allowing him to keep Nick), the nephew, who until now has gloried in his Uncle’s iconoclastic approach to life, tries to play mediator. But when he succeeds, he is alarmed by the uncle’s willingness to cave in to society in order to save the relationship.