A man with an important business meeting finds himself having to take care of the carpool for the neighborhood school children when his wife gets sick. Stopping to get donuts for the kids, things go even more awry when he finds himself a victim of a robbery. However, the situation only gets worse as a desperate man who had been contemplating a bank robbery robs the robbers and takes the man and the kids hostage in their van as his truck is blocked by an armored car. The thing then proceeds into a comedic chase movie. The father finds his kids don't really respect him and they react better to the robber. The end result is everyone gets a lifestyle change, including the original store owner.

Perfectly respectable youngster Ben refuses to stand by when his girl-friend, provocatively impish drug addict Sophie, is shipped off by her airhead ma and brutally domineering stepfather to dodgy Dr. Norman Hail's completely isolated Fiji 'boot camp'. Ben fakes drug problems to get enrolled in the 'serenity' rehabilitation program from wayward teenagers according to their often irresponsible parents. Under ex-military guards captain Logan's ruthless sway, Ben saves an exhausted boy's life before attempting an escape with Sophie.

What makes a hero? January, 1986. Campbell Babbitt is a reporter for the New York World, writing a series on a woman who turned the grief of losing a son into civic acts. He falls in love with her, and when she commits suicide, he continues to write made-up stories about her. His editor sends him to New Hampshire to cover the Challenger flight from the town of teacher Christa McAuliffe. The launch is postponed for a few days, giving Campbell time to get to know a group of misfit students whose own teacher killed himself the day Campbell arrives in town. He pieces the story together that led to the suicide, finds himself attracted to a student, and has to sort out his own loss.