On the 15th anniversary of the Woodsboro Massacre, high school students Jenny Randall and Marnie Cooper are attacked and brutally murdered in their home by a new Ghostface.
Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) visit Barcelona for the summer, staying with Vicky's distant relative Judy (Patricia Clarkson) and her husband Mark (Kevin Dunn). While the two are great friends, Vicky is practical and traditional in her approach to love and commitment and is engaged to the reliable Doug (Chris Messina), whereas Cristina imagines herself to be a nonconformist, spontaneous but unsure of what she wants from life or love.
New York City teenager Clary Fray begins seeing a strange symbol, worrying her mother Jocelyn Fray and her mother's friend Luke Garroway. Later, at a nightclub with her friend, Simon Lewis, Clary is the only person who sees Jace Wayland killing a man. Meanwhile, Jocelyn is abducted by two men, Emil Pangborn and Samuel Blackwell, but she is able to call Clary and warn her about someone named Valentine. Jocelyn drinks a potion putting her in a comatose state. Returning home, Clary finds her mother missing and is then attacked by a demon. Jace appears and kills it. Jace explains that he and her mother Jocelyn are both Shadowhunters (also called Nephilim), warriors that slay demons and rule over the downworlders. Clary has inherited her powers, including the ability to use runes.
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:
Set in the fictional town of Thayer, Massachusetts, the story focuses on Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker), a successful Manhattan executive whose uptight, conservative demeanor is a sharp contrast to that of her boyfriend Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney) and his liberal and rambunctious family.
Ali Rose (Aguilera) moves to Los Angeles after she quits her bar job when her boss refuses to pay her. Once in L.A., she tries and fails at every audition she does until one night, she finds herself unknowingly in a burlesque club when she hears the music on the street. She finds Tess (Cher) and the dancers performing “Welcome to Burlesque” and decides to pursue a career on stage once she meets Jack (Gigandet). Jack refers her to Tess for an audition, but is rejected instantly and ushered out by Sean (Tucci). Instead of leaving, Ali begins serving customers at the club as a waitress, while Tess and Sean observe with Jack asking Tess to give Ali a chance.
The film opens with J. Edgar Hoover in his office during his later years. He asks that a writer, known as Agent Smith, be let in, so that he may tell the story of the origin of the FBI for the sake of the public. Hoover explains that the story begins in 1919, when A. Mitchell Palmer was Attorney General and Hoover's boss at the Justice Department. Palmer suffers an assassination attempt, but is unharmed when the bomb explodes earlier than intended. Hoover recalls that the police handling of the crime scene was primitive, and that it was that night that he recognized the importance of criminal science. Later, Hoover visits his mother, Anna Marie, and tells her that Palmer has put him in charge of a new anti-radical division, and that he has already begun compiling a list of suspected radicals. He leaves to meet Helen Gandy, who has just started as a secretary at the Justice Department. Hoover takes Gandy to the Library of Congress, and shows her the card catalog system he devised. He muses about how easy it would be to solve crimes if every citizen were as easily identifiable as the books in the library. When Hoover attempts to kiss her, she recoils. Hoover gets down on his knees and asks her to marry him, citing her organization and education, but his request is once again denied. However, Gandy agrees to become his personal secretary.
FBI agent Malcolm Turner (Martin Lawrence) is elated to learn that his stepson, Trent Pierce (Brandon T. Jackson), has been accepted to attend Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. However, Trent is uninterested and instead wants Malcolm to sign a recording contract for him since he is underage. When Malcolm refuses, Trent's best friends encourage him to ambush Malcolm on the job in order to obtain the signature. Malcolm, in an attempt to capture Russian gang member Chirkoff (Tony Curran), uses an informant named Canetti to deliver a flash drive to the gang, while Trent attempts to ambush Malcolm on the job. Canetti (Max Casella) reveals that the flash drive is empty and a duplicate is hidden with a friend at the Georgia Girls School for the Arts.
Due to a shortage of police officers, the newly elected mayor of an unnamed American city has announced a policy requiring the police department to accept all willing recruits, effectively abolishing fitness requirements, educational levels, and medical standards. Not everyone in the police force is happy about the new changes.
In an upscale New York City mansion, wealthy and popular Kathryn Merteuil (Gellar) is discussing her prep school with Mrs. Caldwell (Christine Baranski) and Caldwell's daughter Cecile (Selma Blair). Kathryn promises Mrs. Caldwell that she will look out for the sheltered and naive Cecile. Sebastian (Phillippe) enters and Mrs. Caldwell reacts to him coldly and leaves with Cecile. Kathryn reveals that her real intention is to use Cecile to take revenge on Court, her ex-lover, who had dumped her for Cecile. Kathryn asks her step-brother Sebastian to seduce Cecile; he refuses as he is planning to seduce virgin Annette Hargrove (Witherspoon), the daughter of their school's headmaster. Annette is a 'paradigm of chastity and virtue' who recently wrote a published essay about saving herself for marriage and has been temporarily staying with Sebastian's aunt. The two make a wager: If Kathryn wins, she gets Sebastian's vintage Jaguar XK140; if Sebastian wins, Kathryn will have sex with him. It is mentioned that Sebastian keeps a journal detailing his conquests.
Laurent (Alain Chabat) and Loli (Victoria Abril) are a thirty-ish married couple living in southern France with their young children. He is an estate agent; she is a housewife. Laurent has extramarital affairs.
Olive Penderghast, a teenage girl living in Ojai, California lies to her best friend Rhiannon Abernathy about going on a date in order to get out of camping with Rhiannon's hippie parents. Instead, she hangs around the house all weekend listening to Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocketful of Sunshine". The following Monday, pressed by Rhiannon, Olive lies about losing her virginity to a college guy. Marianne Bryant, a prissy and strictly religious Christian at their school, overhears her telling the lie and soon it spreads like wildfire. The school's conservative church group run by Marianne decides Olive will be their next project. Olive confides the truth to her friend Brandon, and he explains how others bully him because of his homosexuality. He later asks Olive to pretend to sleep with him so that he will be accepted by everyone.
Jesse and Chester awaken with hangovers and no memory of the previous night. The television is on, showing an Animal Planet program about how animals use twigs and rocks as tools to get food. Their refrigerator is filled with containers of chocolate pudding, and the answering machine contains an angry message from their twin girlfriends Wilma and Wanda as to their whereabouts. They emerge from their home to find Jesse's car missing, and with it their girlfriends' one-year anniversary presents. This prompts Jesse to ask the film's titular question: "Dude, where's my car?"
A car delivery driver, Kowalski (Barry Newman), arrives in Denver, Colorado late Friday night with a black Chrysler Imperial. The delivery service clerk, Sandy (Karl Swenson), urges him to get some rest, but Kowalski insists on getting started with his next assignment to deliver a white 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T 440 Magnum to San Francisco by Monday. Before leaving Denver, Kowalski pulls into a biker bar parking lot around midnight to buy Benzedrine pills to stay awake for the long drive ahead. He bets his dealer, Jake (Lee Weaver), that he will get to San Francisco by 3:00 pm "tomorrow", even though the delivery is not due until Monday. (Distance between the towns is approximately 1,000 miles (1,600 km) by road).
The film centers on Manuela, an Argentine nurse who oversees donor organ transplants in Ramón y Cajal Hospital in Madrid and single mother to Esteban, a teenager who wants to be a writer.