Achille Tarallo is an absent father and an unhappy husband. He drives buses in Naples for a living but his dream is to be a great crooner. In the meantime he sings at wedding parties with his best friend Café, waiting for their band manager Pennabic to make them famous. One day, Achille falls in love with the new caregiver of his mother, a kind woman from Eastern Europe very different from his nagging wife Elide.

When Debora's ex-husband, a popular neomelodic singer, loses his life in a stage dive, she worries that her 11-year-old son Ciro may be showing symptoms of depression. Taken to a child psychologist, shy Tommaso, Ciro eventually confesses to him that it's not his father's death that has got him down, it's love for his classmate, the cute Ludovica. The two make a deal: Tommaso will help Ciro to win the affections of Ludovica, while Ciro will give Tommaso a hand at having a chance with his mother.

In this fact-based drama, an ecology-minded fisherman is elected mayor of his corrupt seaside town and begins crusading against drugs and crime.