Charles is a bored civil servant struggling through a harsh Utah winter. He spends most of his time reflecting on his romance with Laura, a coworker who left him to return to her husband, an A-Frame salesman.

Working for the Utah state government as a report writer, Charles Richardson reminisces about his past love affair with Laura Connolly, with who he was immediately attracted upon first sight when she worked in the file section of his office. Their relationship was despite Laura then being married to ex-football player Jim, nicknamed Ox, he bringing an adolescent daughter, Rebecca, into their blended family. When she and Charlie met, Laura was already on a trial separation from Ox, which always tainted Laura and Charlie's relationship in her sense of guilt as Ox never did anything bad to precipitate that separation. Charlie can't help but think about Laura as he is still in love with her and wants to get back together with her, their relationship which ended when she returned to Ox, who never knew about Charlie in her life. Charlie's thoughts about Laura are only one complication in his life, those other complicating people being: his perpetually "glass-half-full" sister Susan, who shares the house he inherited from their grandmother; his longtime best friend Sam Maguire, a men's garment salesman who is even less motivated with work than Charlie; his mother Clara, whose eccentricities and suicidal tendencies may solely be a cry for attention; Clara's current husband Pete, who wants a bromance with Charlie despite knowing Charlie doesn't much like him; his boss, Mr. Patterson, who continually uses him as a guidance counselor in issues related to his teenage son; and his typist Betty, who is attracted to Charlie herself not knowing about his and Laura's past relationship, and who Charlie consciously and unconsciously uses in knowing she still is in touch with Laura.—Huggo

Charles is a Salt Lake City civil servant who (*LOVES*) Laura, a lovely housewife with a lovely stepdaughter and an A-frame-selling, ex-quarterback husband named Ox. His roommate is "an unemployed jacket salesman"; his mother is a spacy, laxative-overdosing, overly-eccentric basket case; his perpetually happy sister finds love with the dorkiest of guys; his stepfather has a jones for Turtle Wax; and his boss asks him for advice about his Ivy League son's sexual problems. He listens to Janis Joplin and dreams of getting Laura back once and for all. He does everything in his power to win her back from Ox, and the lengths he goes to provide the structure of the film in this bittersweet romantic comedy...a film that explores what happened to the Woodstock generation when they transcended their idealism (i.e. it was expected that they fall in love and face the music of routine). Charles is perhaps the quintessential saint of this ideology.—thustlebird