Plot
A Greek chorus narrates and comments—and Oedipus, Jocasta, Tiresias, and Cassandra sometimes directly intervene—in this modern fable.
Sportswriter Lenny Weinrib (Woody Allen) is married to the career-driven Amanda (Helena Bonham Carter), who wants a baby but because she cannot afford to get pregnant due to her job, she says that they will adopt. Lenny is opposed to this, but Amanda always has her way, so they adopt a baby boy, whom they name Max.
As Max, it becomes clear he is highly intelligent. Lenny becomes obsessed with learning the identity of Max's biological parents. After great difficulty, Lenny finally locates Max's mother: prostitute and part-time porn star Linda Ash (Mira Sorvino).
Lenny makes an "appointment" with her. At first, Linda appears to be a dumb blonde with a crude sense of humor, along with delusions of becoming an actress. Lenny does not sleep with her and urges her to stop being a prostitute, but Linda becomes furious and throws him out.
It takes a while for Lenny to befriend Linda. Then he begins her lifestyle makeover. Lenny also tricks her into telling him about the child she gave up for adoption. He persuades Linda to quit her profession and even bribes her violent pimp with basketball tickets to let Linda go.
Lenny then sets Linda up with a boxer-turned-onion farmer Kevin (Michael Rapaport). It appears to be a perfect match, until Kevin discovers Linda's background and leaves her.
Meanwhile, Amanda is having an affair with her colleague Jerry (Peter Weller), and Lenny finds out about it. Lenny and Linda console one another and sleep together. Lenny then reconciles with a guilt-ridden Amanda, realizing that they are still in love.
Linda makes one last attempt to win back farm boy Kevin, but as she drives back to the city, a helicopter drops out of the sky. Linda gives the pilot Don a lift and, before long, they end up getting married.
The twist is that Linda is pregnant with Lenny's child. A year later, Lenny and Linda, with their individual children, meet in a toy store. They have each other's child, but they do not know it.
Read more about this topic: Mighty Aphrodite
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)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)