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he film follows Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university in 1967. His wife Judith tells him she wants a divorce, and that she plans to marry Sy Ableman. Larry’s personal life is starting to fall apart. In addition he has problems with his kids, his son Danny, a teenage boy with a discipline problem who owes a school bully twenty dollars for marijuana and his daughter Sarah, who is obsessed with getting a nose job. It all paints a portrait of a dysfunctional Jewish suburbia. Larry also has other issues on his mind; an anonymous hostile letter-writer is trying to sabotage Larry’s chances for tenure at the university, a Jew-hating neighbor and a lonely, pot-smoking housewife who sunbathes in the nude stirring his libido. Struggling, Larry seeks counsel and consults from various local rabbis.