Trama

When a college piano prodigy tries to check his mother into rehab, he is taken hostage by her drug dealer and swept along on a wild adventure.

The story of Eli Smith (Jesse Eisenberg), a piano prodigy, dealing with his troubled mother, Penny (Melissa Leo), and enlisting help from a hapless drug dealer, Sprinkles (Tracy Morgan), on the day he has an audition for a prestigious music program. Events spiral comically out of control as this gang of misfits faces the mistakes of the past, the challenges of the future, and the possibilities of love.—ICM Press Release

Members of the Bloom family love each other despite their problems. Several times married but now single, mother Penny is a drug addict, who doesn't see that her drug use is either a problem or an addiction. She has, however, reluctantly decided to go into a twenty-eight day rehab program. Her son, young adult Eli, is a gifted pianist who doesn't have any close friends and who drinks too much, Penny believing the latter problem being genetic as Eli's father was also a substance abuser. Eli, feeling like he always needs to be the responsible one in the family, wants Penny to get her life together so that he can start his own adult life. Penny's adolescent daughter, Eli's half sister Nicole, has recently been talking through the use of a hand puppet she has named Julio. Nicole's teacher not only has a problem with the puppet because it is dirty, but that Nicole speaks profanely through Julio, Nicole not seeing it as her problem as it is Julio saying those things and not her. Penny, oblivious to what Nicole is doing through Julio, sees her daughter as an angel. Eli's piano teacher Dave has managed to get Eli a local audition for the one spot available at a prestigious music conservatory in Boston, four hours away from their home, about which he has not told Penny. If accepted, he will have to leave for Boston almost as soon as Penny comes out of rehab. He will have a highly structured day in that he has to drop Nicole off at school, drop Penny off at the rehab center, go to the audition, then pick Nicole up after school. He is already nursing a hangover, but a further problem arises in that schedule when Penny finds that she can't be admitted into the program in her state. She has remained clean for several days in preparation, but the center cannot admit her as a volunteer patient since she has no health care. In other words, she has to get some drugs into her system before they can admit her as a chronic user who requires rehab. Eli and Penny go on a quest to get Penny some drugs from her regular dealers, Sprinkles and Black. In this quest, they get into one misadventure after another, the primary questions thus becoming not only if Eli will make it to the audition in time, but if he will make it there in one piece. Along the way, each of the four not only find things out about the others and themselves, but about their lives, Eli's which includes a possible budding romance with longtime casual friend, Chloe.—Huggo

The story of Eli Smith (Jesse Eisenberg), a piano prodigy, dealing with his troubled mother, Penny (Melissa Leo), and enlisting help from a hapless drug dealer, Sprinkles (Tracy Morgan), on the day he has an audition for a prestigious music program. Events spiral comically out of control as this gang of misfits faces the mistakes of the past, the challenges of the future, and the possibilities of love.