À la fin du XVIII siècle, dans un château proche d'un petit village français, vivait un jeune prince capricieux, égoïste et insensible. Pour avoir refusé d'abriter une fée déguisée en vieille mendiante, il est condamné à vivre sous l'apparence d'une bête monstrueuse jusqu'à ce qu'il puisse aimer une femme et s'en faire aimer en retour, ce qui le délivrerait du sortilège qui a frappé son château et ses habitants. Mais les années passent et la Bête perd peu à peu tout espoir de rompre un jour la malédiction.
In 2805, Earth is long-abandoned and covered in heaps of garbage leftover from decades of mass consumerism, facilitated by the megacorporation Buy 'n' Large (BnL). Seven hundred years earlier, BnL evacuated Earth's population in fully automated starliners, leaving behind WALL-E trash compactor robots to clean the planet for humanity's eventual return, however the plan failed and all the bots were shut off. Only one WALL-E robot remains active, and has developed sentience after so many years of life-experience. He manages to remain active by repairing himself using parts from other inactive units.
The film opens with construction executive John (Brad Pitt) and tech support representative Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie) answering questions during marriage counselling. The couple has been married for "five or six" years, but their marriage is suffering to the point that they cannot remember the last time they had sex. They tell the story of their first meeting in Bogotá, Colombia, where they were both secretly on the run from the Colombian authorities - since the authorities were looking for tourists travelling alone after a recent heist, the two claimed to be together to avoid being questioned. They quickly fell in love and married. John later states that Jane "looked like Christmas morning" to him on the day they met.
Edward Lewis (Richard Gere), a successful workaholic businessman and corporate raider in Los Angeles on business, accidentally takes a detour on Hollywood Boulevard while looking for Beverly Hills. He unsuccessfully tries to ask for directions and ends up in the red-light district, where he encounters a sex-worker named Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts), who mistakes him for a possible client. Her roommate and best friend, Kit De Luca (Laura San Giacomo), encourages her to recruit him, though he only wants directions and makes a deal with her to pay her if she shows him the way. Intrigued by her knowledge and wit he hires her to spend the night with him for $300 in his hotel's penthouse apartment, treating her to strawberries and champagne and sharing personal information with her. He comes to trust her as she "surprises" him by flossing her teeth after eating the strawberries (and not doing drugs as he thought she was more likely to do given her profession). They spend the night watching I Love Lucy reruns and having sex.
Carrie walks through the streets of New York City thinking about events that have happened to her and her friends during Sex and the City. Charlotte is now happily married to Harry Goldenblatt, but she had a hard time getting pregnant - so they adopted a Chinese girl named Lily; Miranda has settled down in Brooklyn with Steve (David Eigenberg) to raise their son Brady together; and Samantha has relocated her business to Los Angeles to be close to Smith (Jason Lewis), who is now a superstar, although she misses her old life and takes every opportunity to fly East to be with Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte.
In the summer of 1958, Sandy Olsson (Olivia Newton-John) meets local boy Danny Zuko (John Travolta) at the beach while on vacation and they soon fall in love. As the summer comes to an end, Sandy worries about returning home to Australia and never seeing Danny again, but he assures her that it is only the beginning for them.
Nick Marshall, a Chicago advertising executive and alpha male, who grew up with his Las Vegas showgirl mother, is a chauvinist. He is skilled at selling to men and seducing women, including local coffee attendant Lola. Just as he thinks he's headed for a promotion, his manager, Dan, informs him that he is hiring Darcy McGuire instead, to broaden the firm's appeal to women.
Alex "Hitch" Hitchens (Will Smith) is a professional "date doctor" who coaches other men in the art of wooing women, with a focus on long-term relationships.
In 1985, awkward and shy 16-year-old high-schooler Ted Stroehmann (Ben Stiller) lands a prom date with his dream girl Mary Jensen (Cameron Diaz), only to have it cut short by a painful and embarrassing zipper accident. After the ordeal garners the attention of numerous members of the household and community, Ted is finally carted off to a hospital, subsequently losing contact with Mary.
Fotoula "Toula" Portokalos (Nia Vardalos) is going through an early midlife crisis. At thirty, having had her childhood, adolescence and adult life plagued by bad luck, she feels that she is the only woman in her family who has "failed" at being a typical Greek girl. Her family expects her to be more like her 33-year-old sister Athena (Stavroula Logothettis) and marry a Greek boy, make Greek babies, and "feed everyone until the day she dies." Instead, Toula is stuck working in the family restaurant in Chicago, "Dancing Zorba's." Frumpy and cynical, she fears that she is doomed to be stuck with her life as it is and always has been. One day while at the restaurant, Toula briefly becomes enamored with and embarrasses herself in front of Ian Miller (John Corbett), a handsome school teacher.
William "Will" Thacker (Hugh Grant) owns an independent travel bookshop in Notting Hill. He is divorced and shares his house with an eccentric, uninhibited Welshman named Spike (Rhys Ifans).
In "Andalasia", an animated fairy tale world devoid of problems, in which there are talking animals and "happy endings", Queen Narissa frets that her stepson Prince Edward will soon find his true love, which means that Narissa's position on the throne would be taken over. One day, Edward and Nathaniel, Queen Narissa's henchmen, successfully capture a troll, but Edward rides off to the cottage of a girl named Giselle after hearing her sing about "true love". Knowing Narissa's wishes, Nathaniel sets the troll free to get rid of Giselle, but Edward saves her just in time. When they meet, they instantly fall in love and plan to get married the following day.
Sue Charlton is a feature writer for Newsday (which her father owns) and is dating her editor, Richard Mason. She travels to Walkabout Creek, a small hamlet in the Northern Territory of Australia, to meet Michael J. "Crocodile" Dundee, a bushman reported to have lost half a leg to a Saltwater Crocodile. On arrival in Walkabout Creek (by helicopter due to its remote location), she cannot locate Dundee, but she is entertained at the local pub by Dundee's business partner Walter "Wally" Reilly, who does his best to explain the town and some of its inhabitants, including the towering hulk Donk, who wins money by placing a glass of beer on his head and challenging people to try and spill the beer by punching him in the stomach (Wally explains that Donk has never spilled a drop). When Dundee finally arrives later that night (dramatically announcing his entrance by throwing his hunting knife at the bar and wrestling a stuffed dead crocodile), Sue finds his leg is not missing, but he has a large scar which he refers to as a "love bite". While Sue dances with Dundee, a group of city kangaroo shooters make fun of Dundee's status as a crocodile hunter, causing him to knock the leader out with one punch. Feeling lucky, he then challenges Donk and proceeds to make him spill the entire glass, not by hitting him in the stomach, but by kissing him on the lips and thus startling him into dropping the tankard.
Abby Richter (Katherine Heigl) is a morning show TV producer in Sacramento, California. Abby firmly believes in true love and is a big supporter of complex self-help books such as Chicken Soup for the Soul and Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Coming home from a disastrous date, she happens to see a segment of a local television show, The Ugly Truth, featuring Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler), whose cynicism about relationships prompts Abby to call in to argue with him on-air. The next day, she discovers the TV station is threatening to cancel her show because of its poor ratings. The station owner has hired Mike to do a segment on her show.