Peggy Roberts was an actress who accidentally got pregnant. She didn’t know who her father was and she felt her baby, Dickie, slow her run. She decided to further Dickie’s acting career by having him try out for child roles every day, regardless of whether he was a girl’s role. His mother only loved him when he had a successful acting job. He achieved great success when he joined the television show called “The Glimmer Gang”. After seven years of being on television, the show was canceled and his mother left him. Dickie grew into a troublesome young man who was very rude and never stopped helping anyone unless he helped him.
During a car trip with his girlfriend, Cindy, the car has a flat tire. As Dickie begins to change the tire, the car goes off the cliff and explodes. His girlfriend hitchhiks and leaves him behind. When he returns to civilization, he calls her but she never returns his calls. She thinks that even though she had a successful childhood career, she is currently a road to nowhere.
He starts parking cars for a restaurant and only gets hired because the owner felt sorry for him. He decides to borrow a car from the restaurant in search of opportunities to further his acting career. While he is driving, he is very rude to a man and drives off. The man writes down the license plate, which actually belongs to Rob Reiner. He then meets with Brenden Frasure, who says he’ll see what he can do to get her an audition. Brenden arrives and asks her to visit the producer, Rob Reiner. He says that he would be perfect for the lead physically, but mentally he misses his childhood. As a result, he is a troubled young man who cannot act appropriately for the part. Hoping to land the part, he decides to hire a family to provide him with childhood experiences.
After visiting many strange situations, Dickie finds the Prune family. George, the father agreed to let Dickie live with the family and he soon settles in with the rest of the family. At first the family is tolerant of Dickie, but the children Sam and Sally call him a strange danger. As he moves in, he begins to fill his waterbed. Sally and Sam warn him about the water movement game. Since he is not familiar with the game, he does not take the warning seriously. He ends up wrestling with the hose as it hits him. Sam comes to the rescue and turns off the water.
Dickie doesn’t understand manners, which shows at dinner in George’s absence. He uses language that is not appropriate to use at the table or in front of children. As he returns from the bathroom, he overhears the family talking about not wanting him around and it is suggested that he spend the night in the tree house. So he makes the best of a bad situation and decorates the treehouse and plays music. This attracts the child’s curiosity and they see what he is doing. They decide it’s not so bad and stick around to tell ghost stories.
It starts to rain so they all lie down inside the house. She begins to have a nightmare. Grace, his new mother comes and wakes him up. Then she sings him to sleep. The next day, the kids bring out the Slip’N’Slide. Since Dickie doesn’t have this experience, he tests it before the water is turned on and the carpet is burned. He tries it once with open water but decides it’s lame. He adds canola oil to spice things up and ends up going through the fence.
The next morning, Dickie insists that Grace take him for a stroll in the stroller. As they drive down the street, they run into their next-door neighbor, who is angry because the leaves of the prune tree are falling on his lawn. He then taunts Dickie in the stroller. Dickie defends himself and Grace. Then a fan shows up and asks for a picture of Dickie. In his place, he gives her photos of his private life. He then decides to dye his hair so no one will recognize him.
Dickie walks to Sam and Sally’s school to pick them up. He realizes that a group of boys are picking on Sam, so he makes fun of them. They never bother Sam again. They all get into their mom’s car and make a quick stop for their graphic design interview. He couldn’t find the house, so Dickie decides to improvise by calling the fire department, which takes them directly to the house. As a result, Grace decides to throw him out for being irresponsible. As she is throwing it out, the waterbed jumps. They take the discussion outside. They get yelled at by next door neighbors for yelling on the lawn. This time, Grace fights back and insults them. After the offended neighbors come in, Popeye the dog brings a dead rabbit home. It is owned by the same neighbors who have just been insulted. They quickly clean it up and return it to the outside cage. The neighbors find the rabbit in the cage and are scared. The rabbit died two days ago and was buried. They move because of the devil rabbit who takes Dickie out of the doghouse for a while.
The next day, a moving truck moves into a new family with a girl named Barbie. Sam falls in love with her but doesn’t talk to her. Dickie breaks the ice between the two and later decides to learn to ride a bike.
While getting ice for his bumps from the bike ride, he makes a deal with Grace. He’ll do whatever it takes if she promises to help him be a boy. He first demands that she remove the sanitary gloves that he has been wearing for ten years. George, the father comes home and is angry about Dickie’s hair because he arranged for Dickie to do a commercial for his car business and storms off. They then have a realistic conversation about how George has always been gone and they feel like the marriage is falling apart.
That night, Dickie helps Sally with a dance routine for a school test, which she masters. That night, his girlfriend, Cindy, visits him. George says that he can keep her since he is attracted to her. Dickie, on the other hand, doesn’t want her there. He feels that he will get in the way of learning from her and is still angry that she left him in the desert and did not return his calls. So he starts being clumsy for her to leave. He even hits her over the head with a cork and talks about the kids all the time. She leaves.
The next morning, the family fakes a Christmas morning with a red bike. Dickie tries to get excited, but he doesn’t feel it. Then the family surprises him with his favorite game, Candyland. He now knows what it’s like to feel like a kid on Christmas morning.
Will Dickie get the role in the movie with all his hard work? Watch and discover.