In the 1960s, Pearl Berman has just returned home from her husband Jack's funeral, her grief disrupted by her many relatives animatedly discussing which parkway offered the best route to the cemetery. Pearl's family tackles any and every subject – from body odor to toilets to Tupperware to borscht – as if it is worthy of a major debate. 　　Into a household filled with kvetchers steps Joe Meledandri, a distinguished Italian who years ago met Pearl's wayward husband in a bar, and convinced him to return to her. He has desired her ever since, and now that Pearl is a widow, Joe feels the time is right to make his move. He invites her for coffee, his first step on the road to seduction. 　　What remains to be seen is if he can overcome family objections to religious differences and if he is willing to accept Pearl's daughters: the lonely, overweight Bibby and the pretty but psychologically unstable Norma, who dresses up as celebrities to escape the grief that has overwhelmed her since the death of one of her children and divorce from her husband. At her father's funeral, Norma dresses up the way Jackie Kennedy appeared at the funeral of her husband; appears as Marilyn Monroe as she serves her surviving son his breakfast; and also impersonates Faye Dunaway and Barbra Streisand, among others, and those are just some of the crazy relatives who come as part of the package.