Igby Slocumb (Kieran Culkin) is the 17-year-old product of a seriously dysfunctional family. His father, Jason (Bill Pullman) is bewilderingly and insanely eccentric; his mother Mimi (Susan Sarandon) is a granite-edged matriarch with a long-term dependency on over-the-counter drugs; and his over-achieving older brother Oliver (Ryan Philipe), in whose shadow Igby has forever found himself, has his sights on Columbia University via the path to young Republicanism. Following his father’s inevitable nervous breakdown, Igby’s world starts spiraling out of control as Mimi bouncess him from one East Coast prep school to another. His only chance of salvation arrives in the comely form of Sookie Sapperstein (Claire Danes), an earnest undergrad/ exestentialist who offers Igby the two things he has never had—love, and the realization that maybe he’s not all alone in the world.