| Director | Jim Kouf |
|---|---|
| Genre | comedy film |
| Country | Mexico, United States |
Somewhere in the jungle a little girl (Erika Faraon) is sick. Everybody in the tribe is really worried, especially her father K'in (Jorge Reynoso) and her mother (Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez). The witchdoctor cannot heal her and gets drunk. The witchdoctor, called Kayum (Adalberto Martínez "Resortes") throws out a kind of omen/incantation while being completely wasted. It produces a huge thunderstorm with plenty of lightning bolts. It affects the weather in New York, where Roger Briggs (Tom Conti) is performing surgery. The lights go in and out, but he finally finishes it well. The lightning also affects Jean (Teri Garr), who is at a party, enjoying her new-found freedom after her divorce from her hard-working and wealthy husband.
A robbery goes awry. One of the robbers is left stranded and, during his attempt to run away from the police, he causes a multiple car accident. Jean's car ends up at the inner-shop side of a window shop, and Roger's car is barely working. Jean doesn't want to be left to her own devices, so she enters Roger's car. Roger can't stand his ex-wife, and his car is his and only his, especially because it's the only thing which his divorce has granted him. The rest of things went to Jean, his ex-wife.
The robber, Juan, (Paul Rodríguez) gets into Roger's car. He pulls out a gun and kidnaps Jean and Roger, who is driving. He takes them to his home, ties them down and imprisons them within a closet. Jean and Roger succeed on releasing themselves, although they are fighting and verbally abusing each other all the time. They leave the closet, pass through the open door of a room where Juan's relatives are also arguing and try to leave. However, when they enter another room, a hidden police officer fights Roger.
The police were about to break into the criminals' nest. Roger's fight with the police officer cause the police to start shooting like crazy. Juan runs away again, kidnapping Jean and Roger again, and Roger is driving again. The police run after them, shooting wildly. Juan gets frantic because Jean and Roger keep on arguing all the time. There is a moment when Jean tries to jump free but Roger convinces her not to.
A prostitute (Barbara Whinnery) has just rejected a client. One of her heels gets stuck on the pavement. She leaves it there when she hears the police cars suddenly approaching her. The broken heel causes one of the police cars to swerve violently and a shot to go the wrong way. The police car crashes into a bank and is eventually driven to a halt in front of two bank robbers (Alejandro Bracho and Carlos Vendrell) who are caught red-handed trying to blow up the safe of the bank. The shot causes a cash machine to malfunction and release all its money on the head of the tramp (Eduardo Lugo) who was sleeping underneath, who in consequence becomes a rich man.
Harry (Christopher Lloyd) was preparing the plane to take off the following day. As the police arrive shooting, he has to take off with Juan, Jean and Roger getting in the plane in a messy way. Juan gets wounded in an arm and Roger takes care of him. Juan, Jean and Roger seem to become friendly. Jean gets hold of the shotgun, but it's unloaded.
Harry's plane is old-fashioned, rusty, and many instruments don't work well. Juan and Harry jump the plane with their chutes. Harry jumps on top of some Mexican police officers, and Harry says that a man and a woman dressed to the nines kidnapped him. That rings a bell with the Mexican police officers.
Roger tries to fly the plane. He and his ex-wife end up talking about what caused their marriage to fail. At that moment, Roger says that he's "getting the hang of it"—meaning flying the plane—and they both laugh. Both engines die away, and they can't help but laugh about it. They have to go up to avoid a mountain, which causes a rock to fall away. That rock causes a landslide, which will kill a Mexican criminal (Mario Arreola) who had tied a young husband down and was about to rape the young wife.
They take off, and Jean panics when she thinks that Roger is dead. However, he is not, and even pulls her leg off. Jean gets angry and wants to walk through the desert. They find the skeleton of somebody who died in the desert. They walk up to Gomez (Paco Morayta) and his fellow police officer (José Chávez) who are desperate. The Mexican police officers can't understand how the criminals they were looking for had the stamina to survive the landcrash and leave unharmed on their feet. Trapping the two American runaways was going to be their road to success. At that moment, Roger and Jean appear, and try to ask for help.
Gomez and his associate put them in their police car and take them to the police station. Jean and Roger ask the judge (Jorge Russek) to be taken to the embassy, but nobody listens to them. As Jean is a lawyer, she explains the story. They are put into a cell, where they argue some more. Finally, Roger admits that he was worried about Jean, and that was why he got angry when she appeared so late after work nonchalantly, and that was why he broke some bric-a-brac at home - which was the last drop for Jean and pushed her to apply for the divorce.
The judge tells them that the American embassy has already been contacted. They will be freed at the end of the week if the embassy checks their backgrounds. Meanwhile, Juan and Harry were plotting to rob the bank of the Mexican town. However, Juan is already drunk, but the bartender (Víctor Alcocer Gómez) serves him some more. There, he overhears -when Gomez and his mate are celebrating that the Americans are in gaol- that Jean and Roger are at the local prison. Juan tells Harry that there's a change of plans, and they use the dynamite to blow up one of the walls of the prison.
Juan and Harry take Roger and Jean to the derelict boat which is waiting for them to sail away. Captain Irvine (Roger Cudney) betrays them and the police arrive.