Two ultra-precocious Upper West Side twelve-year-olds, Franny and Jamie, are best friends. Jamie, the "new boy" in town, has experienced his parents' divorce and guides his friend Franny in the art of surviving her own folks' imminent split. Franny senses the divorce because she has been secretly watching her father arrive home at 5:00 every morning and pathetically try to brush off (to his wife) and hide (from his daughter) the fact that he has been away all night. She is down in the dumps and finds a kindred spirit in her buddy Jamie, whose mother and father split up long ago. He points out the advantages of being a "child of divorce" - and is so persuasive that he almost convinces himself as well as Franny. When Franny connivingly convinces her parents to let her go to a sleep-over with Jamie, they explore their budding curiosity for the opposite sex. When Franny's mother finds the book "The Joy of Sex" in her daughter's bedroom and discovers that her daughter has deceived her, four frantic "adult" couples converge on the sleep-over site, Jamie's father's swanky, fantastical bachelor pad, to catch the two young ones in a compromising position. Ultimately, Jamie and Franny realize that, in order to survive the undeniable disadvantages of their parents' divorce, they must try to weather the hard times together as friends...if not more.

The portion of this film's budget provided by United Artists was cut to $2.5 million so that United Artists could properly finance the increasingly expensive financial demands of Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate (1980). As a result, this is the last film that Robert Altman personally produced for fourteen years.

Corine:
They're too old to play "Doctor" and too young to do anything else.

Composed by Craig Doerge
Lyrics by Judy Henske