Three generations of adult men share a genetic trait of "stubbornness" that pulls them apart from one another. Nathan Minter, a career-driven famed civil rights attorney, a "defender of the down-trodden," is a real schlemiel on the home court in dealing with his inter-religious marriage, aging and irascible father, and budding lawyer son. His father Morris Minter is an octogenarian widower who deals with loneliness by urinating on public bushes, returning used lamb chops to grocery meat counters, and angering big-wigs, thereby attracting the attention of local authorities, the FBI, and Nathan. Marc Minter had all the advantages that his father Nathan did not enjoy when he came up in the world, but the younger lawyer denies his father's dream of partnering in a civil rights practice in favor of the fast-track, big bucks world of corporate law; despite all of his material success, happiness eludes Marc because of his phobia to committing to marriage. The Minter men learn that to be more than half a person they must accept each others flaws and the changes that develop in their relationships, or else they will lose those relationships altogether.