Carnegie Mellon English Professor Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) is a widowed parent of an alienated college son, James (Ashton Holmes), overachieving high school daughter, Vanessa (Elliot Page), and sibling to an adopted ne'er-do-well brother, Chuck (Thomas Haden Church) who he cannot evade enough. He is bitter, arrogant, self-absorbed and uninterested in his students. This becomes a problem when he parks illegally on campus. The car is impounded and he does not pay the fine before getting to the college impound lot, watched by a disgruntled former student. Lawrence has a trauma-induced seizure after falling from the top of a fence after retrieving his briefcase from inside the impounded car.