Plot
In Kenosha, Wisconsin, Darcy, editor at her high school paper, and her long-term boyfriend Stan are in their final year of high school and already have been accepted at good colleges; before Darcy goes to college to study journalism, she'll go on a trip to Paris with her mother for her graduation present, while Stan will go to Caltech to study architecture. With the help of Darcy's best friend Lila (Sharon Brown), they spend a weekend together, where they sleep together and Darcy becomes pregnant. They announce the news at Thanksgiving, and neither Darcy's mother Donna (Flynn), who was abandoned by her husband and brought up Darcy alone, nor Stan's Catholic parents (Mars and Ferrell) are very supportive. Respectively, they urge the young couple to have an abortion or give up the baby for adoption. Darcy plans to have the abortion, but doesn't go through with it, to Stan's relief.
At Christmas, the kids announce their plans to keep the baby, causing a break between them and their parents. They rent a decrepit apartment and get married to the cheers of their friends. On the advice of her guidance counselor, Darcy drops out of high school but works toward her GED. Prom is interrupted by Darcy's water breaking; although baby Thea is healthy, Darcy suffers from post-partum depression, unable to even hold her daughter, and Stan struggles to pay the bills on a part-time job salary. Only when Darcy hears an intruder (who turns out to be Stan's father) and picks up her baby protectively, does she break from her depression.
Without telling Darcy, Stan sacrifices his Caltech scholarship because there is no married housing. Although Stan takes a second, dead-end job, the bills pile up and the couple finally moves in with Donna, which alienates Stan and Darcy, and causes Stan to start drinking heavily. Local vixen Michaela (Michelle Downey) informs Darcy of the scholarship deception so she enlists Stan's best friend Chris (John Zarchen) in a plan to ensure he take the scholarship and go to college after all. Unfortunately, the plan entails throwing out Stan and annulling the marriage. Stan reconciles with his parents, but is heartbroken over the split with Darcy.
At Darcy's night school graduation, Stan arrives to inform Darcy he has applied for scholarships to University of Wisconsin–Madison for them both. Darcy lets slip her role in the Caltech deception with Chris and Stan chases after her as she drives away. Darcy realizes her mother's own insecurities have influenced her too much and she returns to the empty school looking for Stan. They reconcile, remarking Thea will have a very early curfew and will not be allowed to date until she turns 18.
Read more about this topic: For Keeps (film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
““The plot thickens,” he said, as I entered.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)