The movie opens outside of a building where terrorists are holding hostages and a nuclear bomb. The Reno Sheriff's Department arrives in a helicopter, called in as experts. As the group prepare to deal with the situation, Deputy Travis Junior (Robert Ben Garant) wakes up and realizes it was a dream; he was sleeping at the wheel and the vehicle he and Lt. Dangle are in crashes.
Chili Palmer (John Travolta) helps Edie Athens (Uma Thurman), the widow of an executed friend, Tommy Athens (James Woods), to resurrect a record company using the talents of young and talented female vocalist and songwriter, Linda Moon (Christina Milian). The plot is complicated by several facts:
The plot is centered on two underachieving pot smokers: Silas (Method Man) and Jamal (Redman). When Silas's friend Ivory (Chuck Davis) dies, Silas uses his ashes as fertilizer for a new batch of marijuana. While both are sitting in the parking lot before taking their "THC" (Testing for Higher Credentials, a parody of the SAT in allusion to Tetrahydrocannabinol) exams for college, neither is able to smoke his individual marijuana stash without the help of the other.
In 1993, Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) is an unemployed single mother of three children, who has recently been injured in a traffic accident with a doctor and is suing him. Her lawyer, Ed Masry (Albert Finney), expects to win, but Erin's explosive courtroom behavior under cross-examination loses her the case, and Ed will not return her phone calls afterwards. One day he arrives at work to find her in the office, apparently working. She says that he told her things would work out and they didn't, and that she needed a job. He feels bad for her, and decides to give her a try at the office.
A career bank robber, Jack Foley (George Clooney), and a U.S. Marshal, Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez), are forced to share a car trunk during Foley's escape from a Florida prison. After he completes his getaway, Foley is chased by Sisco while he and his friends—right-hand man Buddy (Ving Rhames) and unreliable associate Glenn (Steve Zahn)—work their way north to Bloomfield Hills, a wealthy northern suburb of Detroit. There they plan to pay a visit to shady businessman Ripley (Albert Brooks), who foolishly bragged to them in prison years before about a cache of uncut diamonds hidden in his home.
Judith Moore had what she thought was a perfect marriage, with both she and her husband studying to be doctors. But after she puts her studies on hold to find a job and support them, many years pass until suddenly he leaves Judith to be with another doctor. Depressed, she holes up in her apartment, where the middle-aged Pat Francato serves as a building superintendent and elevator operator. He is as lonely as she is, beset with gambling problems, and Judith and Pat make a connection. Yet what he wishes to pursue as a romantic relationship, Judith sees only as a friendship. Her friend Liz Bailey, who sings at a nightclub, makes attempts to improve Judith's love life as well as her own.
In "the not-too-distant future", eugenics is common. A genetic registry database uses biometrics to classify those so created as "valids" while those conceived by traditional means and more susceptible to genetic disorders are known as "in-valids". Genetic discrimination is illegal, but in practice genotype profiling is used to identify valids to qualify for professional employment while in-valids are relegated to menial jobs.
The film opens with Willa Weston (Jamie Lee Curtis) arriving in Atlanta to take a high ranking position in a company recently acquired by Octopus Inc.'s owner, Rod McCain (Kevin Kline). After meeting his son, vice president of marketing Vince McCain (also played by Kline), and Rod's assistant Neville, Willa is told by McCain that he has already sold the company where she was to work. Now without a job, Willa agrees to run another recent acquisition, Marwood Zoo, in an attempt to create a business model that can be used for multiple zoos in the future.
Chili Palmer, a loan shark based in Miami, clashes with mobster, Ray "Bones" Barboni over a leather jacket borrowed from Palmer at a restaurant without permission by Mr. Barboni. They have two confrontations, the first of which leaves Barboni with a broken nose. Barboni then wants his boss Jimmy Capp to go after Palmer, but he refuses, as Palmer has done nothing wrong. Barboni took the jacket without permission, and Chili's car keys were in the jacket. Jimmy also tells Bones that Chili works for another mafioso named Momo and Capp has no power over him. But soon after Palmer's boss, Momo, dies of a heart attack, Chili finds himself working for Barboni, whose first order is for Palmer to collect a loan shark debt owed by dry cleaner Leo Devoe. Devoe was believed to have been killed in a commercial airliner crash, but in truth had actually gotten off the plane, and failed to re-board because he was getting drunk in the airport bar. After the plane crash, Devoe's wife identified his personal effects, and the airline quickly offers her an insurance check for $300,000. Faye carelessly gives Leo the insurance money, and he heads out of Miami. When Chili visits Leo's "widow" Faye, she reveals to Palmer that Leo is still alive, has left Miami, and is partying and winning money in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Four friends who recently graduated from college live together in Houston, Texas. Coffee-house guitarist Troy Dyer and budding filmmaker Lelaina Pierce are attracted to each other, although they have not acted on their feelings except for one brief, drunken encounter. Troy is floundering, having lost several minimum wage jobs—the last of which he loses early in the film for stealing a candy bar from his employer. Lelaina was valedictorian of her university, and has aspirations to become a documentarian, although initially having to settle for a position as production assistant to a rude and obnoxious TV host.
"Pumpkin" (Tim Roth) and "Honey Bunny" (Amanda Plummer) are having breakfast in a diner, and discussing their life as robbers. They decide to rob the restaurant after realizing they could make money off the customers as well as the business, as they did during their previous heist. Moments after they initiate the hold-up, the scene breaks off and the title credits roll.
While growing up in Oklahoma, young Lane Frost (Cameron Finley) learns the tricks of the bull riding trade at the hand of his father, Clyde (James Rebhorn), an accomplished rodeo bronco rider himself. As he enters his teenage and early adult years, Lane (Luke Perry) travels the western rodeo circuit with his best friends Tuff Hedeman (Stephen Baldwin) and Cody Lambert (Red Mitchell). He meets and falls in love with a young barrel racer, Kellie Kyle, and they eventually marry in 1984.
Jimmy Hoffa and Bobby Ciaro are impatiently waiting in the parking lot of a roadhouse diner on July 30,1975. Others are late for a meeting. Asked if he wants to leave, Hoffa gives Ciaro a scornful glance. The first flashback to 1935 then occurs: