Plot summary

Melanie is a typical single mother, paying the bills, taking care of dinner, tucking in the child, and then preparing for her next day at work, before hitting the bed herself due to sheer exhaustion. Before she can get any sleep, her son Sammy wakes up and needs water. Sammy is excited about the field trip the next day, and that his father will attend his soccer day in the evening.Melanie Parker (Michelle Pfeiffer) is an architect and divorced single mother to son Sammy (Alex D. Linz). Her day gets off to a bad start when she is late to drop Sammy off at school, due to the forgetfulness of fellow single parent Jack Taylor (George Clooney), a New York Daily News reporter whose daughter Maggie (Mae Whitman) is thrust into his care that morning by his ex-wife Kristen (Sheila Kelley). Kristen had to leave for her honeymoon with her new husband. And her babysitter canceled at the last minute. Kristen had told Jack specifically to take Maggie to Melanie's before 8 AM, so Melanie can take them to school together, but Jack forgot to tell Melanie that he is taking Maggie to school himself. Melanie kept waiting till 8:30 AM and is now late herself.The children arrive seconds too late to go on a school field trip. They take a taxi to rush to the pier but miss the ferry as well. Their parents are forced to accept that, on top of hectically busy schedules, they must work together to supervise each other's children. In the confusion of sharing a taxi, they accidentally switch cell phones, causing each of them, all morning, to receive calls intended for the other one, which they then have to relay to the other person.Liza (Rachel York) is Melanie's sister and cannot take in Sammy as she is organizing a fund raiser for her husband. Melanie must make an architectural design presentation to an important client. Jack has to find a source for a scoop on the New York mayor's mob connections. Jack offers to watch the kids during the day, if Melanie can watch them in the evening. But Melanie refuses to hand over Sammy to Jack, whom she thinks is irresponsible. Sammy causes havoc at Melanie's office with toy cars, causing her to trip and break her scale model display. Melanie's boss Smith Leland (George Martin) is not happy that Melanie was 25 minutes late for the presentation and was not even prepared.Meanwhile Jack is pulled in by his boss Lew (Charles Durning), who says that Jack's source Manny (Joe Grifasi) for the scoop into Mayor's campaign contribution from the mob, is going to state on record that he never spoke to Jack. Jack needs to track down Manny, or his credibility will be shot to pieces. Lew's cat eats the goldfish from it's tank that Maggie was holding. Melanie had given the tank to Jack to hold and forgot to take it back.In frustration, Melanie takes Sammy to a child daycare center (which is having a "Superhero Day"), where she comes across Jack trying to convince Maggie to stay and behave herself. They create impromptu costumes for the children, utilizing Jack's imagination and Melanie's resourcefulness. She takes her model to a shop to get it quickly repaired. Meanwhile Jack tracks down his source Manny, who says that he is afraid for his and his family's life.Having left for a meeting, Melanie panics when she receives a phone call from Sammy regarding another child having a psychedelic drug. She phones Jack in desperation to ask him to pick up both kids. He agrees on the condition that she take them at 3:15 PM while he chases down a potential new source. Jack has found out that the Sanitation Commissioner is in Barbados in the middle of the city's garbage scandal with his new girlfriend. Jack decides to contact his angry wife Elaine Lieberman (Ellen Greene) as his potential new source. Meanwhile, Melanie gets her model repaired and is prepared for the client meeting at 2 pm. The meeting goes well and is invited for drinks that evening. All goes well and the kids are reverted to Melanie's care at 3 PM, as planned.Jack goes to meet Elaine Lieberman whom he has tracked down at her spa appointment. Elaine is more than happy to go on the record against her husband. She has proof of deposits made by her husband, the Sanitation Commissioner, in his illegal accounts. While in Melanie's care, Maggie goes missing. Melanie breaks down in despair at the police station, files a missing child report and goes to a mayoral press conference to find Jack (Jack was not contactable on phone as his battery is dead). He is notified by the police that Maggie has been found. Jack finds Maggie in a pet store, where she was playing with the cats and makes it to the press conference just in time to confront the mayor with his scoop. Jack has proof that the sanitation commissioner took money from the mob and made illegal campaign contributions into the Mayor's accounts.Although the two have been antagonistic, Melanie and Jack work together to get both Sammy and Maggie to a soccer game. Melanie insists that she will have time to do drinks with her clients, despite Jack protesting that it will make them late for the game. Melanie starts her pitch to her clients, but upon seeing Sammy in high spirits, she realizes that she cares more about her son than her job. Bravely insisting that she must leave immediately to be with her son, she fully expects to be fired, yet the clients are impressed.At the game, Melanie meets her ex-husband, who admits that he has lied to Sammy about a summer trip and that he is going on tour as a drummer with Bruce Springsteen. That evening, Jack wants a reason to visit Melanie's apartment, so he takes Maggie to buy goldfish to replace the ones that were eaten earlier in the day by a cat.At Melanie's apartment, the children watch TV while Jack and Melanie share an awkward first kiss. Melanie goes to the bathroom to freshen up; when she returns, an exhausted Jack is asleep on the sofa. Melanie joins him and they fall asleep together.