Henry Crawford is tricked into job swapping by an old friend with an evil plan.

Henry Crawford is the titular absent-minded professor busy at work in his laboratory. He has a girlfriend, but she is getting frustrated at his repeatedly missing their dates and spending more time with his experiments than with her. One day, Prof. Crawford makes an incredible discovery a form of rubber that defies gravity with each bounce, which he names Flubber. Hopefully, with this invention Crawford can prove to his love that he's not just a hopeless loser stuck doing dead-end research.

In order to beat inflation and subsidize their alimony checks, three suburban housewives plot to steal $1 million from a large plastic ball which is displayed in a local shopping center.

A disenchanted young Professor of Semantics at a California college learns of a distant relative's death in Missouri. He journeys cross-country to the funeral, then decides to spend the summer there and work as a laborer for a power-line company. In time, he meets a girl and falls in love but then faces an important decision as to which direction he wants his life to go.