Venkat Ramakrishnan (Srikanth), Sevarkodi Senthil (Jiiva) and Panchavan Parivendan aka Pari (Vijay) are three first year engineering students who share a room in the hostel of Ideal Engineering College (IEC), Chennai. Venkat studies engineering to pursue his father's wishes over his own wish – to become a wildlife photographer, while Senthil studies engineering to get his family out of poverty. Pari, on the other hand, studies engineering for his simple passion for machines and devices. He believes that one should follow excellence, not success, as success will take care of itself if excellence is followed. However, this approach to studies is sneered upon by the dean of the college, Professor Virumandi "Virus" Santhanam (Sathyaraj). Virus and the faculty favour Pari's classmate, an NRI student Srivatsan aka "Silencer" (Sathyan), who believes in mindless rote learning over understanding to reach his goals of corporate status. Pari constantly spars with Virus and Silencer due to their differences in their educational approaches.
Im Na-mi (Yoo Ho-jeong), a wealthy housewife and mother, does her daily routine. While things look perfect on the outside (wonderful home, generous husband, beautiful daughter), she is depressed about her life. When she washes her face, she sees wrinkles on her skin. When she asks her husband to visit her mother at the hospital, he replies by giving her money to buy luxury bags, and her daughter expresses similar indifference and annoyance. In the mornings, Na-mi eats breakfast alone while father and daughter head to work and school, respectively. She looks outside and notices a group of high school girls who are walking and laughing.
Action takes place during a heatwave in a bombed-out, post-war Tokyo. Rookie homicide detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) has his Colt pistol stolen during a trolley ride and gives chase to the pickpocket, but when he fails to capture him he reports back to headquarters filled with guilt and shame. He goes on to prowl the city backstreets undercover, looking for suspects and picking up leads. He eventually picks up the trail of a gun racket. When the stolen gun is used in a crime, Murakami partners up with the veteran detective Satō (Takashi Shimura).
In the fictional country of Moronika, three munitions manufacturers—Messrs. Ixnay (Richard Fiske), Onay (Dick Curtis) and Amscray (Don Beddoe)—decide their country is in need of a change. They decide to implement a dictatorship, oust the king, and go about finding someone stupid enough to be a figurehead leader. Ixnay volunteers the three wallpaper hangers simultaneously working in his dining room—the Stooges.
Administrators at a Mildew College, an all-girl school, are begging the school's largest benefactor, Mrs. Catsby (Gladys Gale), to provide an athletic fund for the school. She does not approve of girls playing sports, and informs the administrators that the money will be used for the salaries of the three new European professors that are arriving that day. Meanwhile, the Stooges have just started a new job as servicemen at a service station, with a strong held belief of "super soyvice!" When they get a customer (three older German men driven by a chauffeur), they proceed to provide their own inept brand of service, angering the men. The mayhem ends when Curly accidentally puts gasoline in the radiator and Moe checks it with a match. The resulting explosion wrecks the car and prompts the Stooges to flee in a nearby ice cream truck that they had coincidentally thrown the German men's suitcases into. Curly climbs in the back while Moe and Larry are in the front.
The Stooges are pest exterminators who are forced to drum up business by planting mice, moths, and ants in an unsuspecting house under the threat of being fired if they cannot. They select a fancy mansion where a high society dinner party is being held. After successfully infesting the house with vermin, the trio are predictably hired to clean up their own mess, without interrupting the party, dressed as guests.
The Stooges are repairmen fixing the doorbell in a large house which is the secret headquarters of some Nazi spies, headed by the ruthless Hans (Vernon Dent). They manage to ruin most of the house while working on the wiring and then subdue the spies and sink an enemy submarine by remote control.
The Stooges are the sole heirs to a grandiose inheritance, but the money is in the hands of an underhanded broker named Icabod Slipp (Kenneth MacDonald). They try to claim the inheritance at the office of Cess, Poole, and Drayne. Their attorney, played by Emil Sitka, explains that he doesn't have their money and they have to find Slipp. While in the office, the trio try to help find some files and tangle with a very stubborn filing cabinet. One by one the Stooges confront Slipp in his office. He in turn accuses first Larry, then Moe, then Shemp, of being that crook Slipp, and successfully flees his office with the money.
The Stooges are menders who drum up business at a construction site by poking holes on the bottom of the workers' lunch boxes, then offering to repair the holes. When their ruse is discovered, they are chased onto the site and blend in with a crowd of men seeking employment. Curly states that they are "the best riveters that ever riveted," and the hiring workman (Edmund Cobb) sends them to work on the 97th floor, despite Curly's debilitating fear of heights. In order to calm his fears, he wears a parachute.
This short begins in the home of Wealthy J. Rumsford Rumford (Don Beddoe). The guests of the party are remarking as to why his wife, Sherry Rumford (Lorna Gray), hasn't appeared yet. Rumsford is growing impatient. His psychiatrist friend calms him down. Then Sherry arrives by driving her car into the middle of the living room. Rumsford asks his psychiatrist friend for help, so he recommends Doctors Ziller, Zeller, and Zoller, who he claims are very expensive and have very peculiar methods, but get results. Rumsford then has his butler, Williams (Bud Jamison), call their office.
Fuller Bull (Vernon Dent), the head of the ailing Daily News, confronts the reporters he hired for not getting him a story to keep up with a competing newspaper called the Daily Star Press. Fuller Bull catches three shirtmen (the Stooges) outside thinking they are reporters from the Daily Star Press and immediately hires them to get a picture of visiting Prince Shaam of Ubeedarn (Dick Curtis). Word has it that Shaam has plans to marry local wealthy socialite Mrs. Van Bustle (Symona Boniface). The trio disguise themselves as servants, and work their way into a party being held at Mrs. Van Bustle's home in the honor of the prince.
The film tells the story of a dreamer, Everton (Everton Dennis) who after things go wrong in his home town of (Toll Gate)Clarendon, leaves for the United States to make it big in music, where the Don of LA (Paul Campbell) demands more than he can deliver.
The brothers Antonio (Totò) and Peppino (Peppino De Filippo) Caponi are boorish landowners living in southern Italy. Antonio is lavish and steals his stingy brother's money.
Set in a small town of Stillwater, Minnesota, Erik (Brad Renfro) is an adolescent loner with an emotionally abusive and neglectful and selfish workaholic mother, Gail (Diana Scarwid) who hardly spends time with him. His father, who treated Erik considerably better than his mother, died a couple years prior. Dexter (Joseph Mazzello), who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion, is Erik's neighbor. Initially, Erik is put off by Dexter, but the two soon become good friends despite their differences. Erik seeks a family in Dexter and his congenial mother, Linda (Annabella Sciorra), due to his strained relationship with Gail, but keeps the friendship a secret from her, knowing that she won't approve.
Evelyn Couch (Bates), a timid, unhappy housewife in her forties, meets elderly Virginia Threadgoode, known as Ninny (Tandy) in an Anderson, Alabama nursing home. Ninny, over several encounters with Evelyn, tells her the story of the now-abandoned town of Whistle Stop, and the people who lived there. The film's subplot concerns Evelyn's dissatisfaction with her marriage and her life, her growing confidence, and her developing friendship with Ninny. The narrative switches several times between Ninny's story, which is set between World War I and World War II, and Evelyn's life in 1980s Birmingham.