Generally, the film is a dark and quirky "tragicomedy". The "everyman" protagonist, Dr. Frank Sangster (Steve Martin), is a dentist with a fairly pleasant but rather innocuous, ordinary and uneventful life. But all of this gets derailed, and Frank's life descends into an increasingly complex mess, from the minute a beautiful and seductive new patient named Susan Ivey (Helena Bonham Carter) comes to him, seeking a root canal and a little pain relief...