This film was Peter Bogdanovich's homage to musical comedies of the 1930s. A millionaire named Michael Oliver Pritchard III and a singer named Kitty O'Kelly meet and fall in love. Meanwhile, an indigent woman named Brooke Carter and an Italian gambler named Johnny Spanish meet and fall in love. All four people meet each other and become friends (actually, Kitty and Brooke had been friends since high-school), and soon, Brooke's crude, fun-loving maid Elizabeth falls in love with Michael's valet Rodney James. Later on, Michael and Brooke fall in love, and Kitty and Johnny decide to follow them around. In order to make Brooke and Michael jealous, they try to look like they are falling in love as well. Eventually, Michael and Johnny get into a fight but then immediately make up. Soon, Brooke and Kitty make up. The two couples pair off successfully and they live happily ever after.

Bea Pullman and her daughter Jessie have had a hard time making ends meet since Bea's husband died. Help comes in the form of Delilah Johnson, who agrees to work as Bea's housekeeper in exchange for a room for herself and her daughter Peola. Bea comes up with a plan to market Delilah's pancake recipe. The two soon become wealthy and as the years go on, their friendship deepens. Their relationships with their daughters, however, become strained. Ashamed of her mother, Peola seeks a new life by passing for white. Bea's love for her daughter is tested when she and Jessie fall for the same man.

Gillian Holroyd is just your average, modern-day, witch, living in a New York apartment with her Siamese familiar, Pyewacket. But one day a handsome publisher, Shep Henderson walks into her building and Gillian decides she wants him--especially as it turns out he's marrying Merle Kittridge, an old poison penpal from Gillian's college days. So, Gillian casts a spell over Shep. But her powers are in danger of being exorcised by something stronger than the bell-book-and-candle routine: Love.

British Thomas Fowler enjoys his life in Saigon working as a reporter for the London Times, covering the war in Vietnam between the colonial French powers and the Communists, who seem to be winning the war. In the later stages of his career, he takes his job lightly now, filing stories only on occasion, and no longer doing field work. But most importantly, this posting allows him to escape from what he considers a dreary life in London, including an unsatisfying marriage to a Catholic woman, who will never grant him a divorce, which in turn allows him to have an affair with a young Vietnamese ex-taxi dancer named Phuong, whom he loves and would marry if he were able. Phuong's sister doesn't much like Fowler, if only because he cannot provide a stable future for her. His idyllic life is threatened when the head office suggests he go back to London. In this way, he decides to write a major story to prove to his superiors that he should stay in Saigon. In 1952, Fowler is called into the ...