Eighty-nine people live in Baxter, California, a depressed mining community dominated by a cola bottling plant. The youth here are an odd lot. Blue (Brendan Sexton III) dreams of finishing a project envisioned by his deceased father — building an ocean park in the middle of the desert. Pete (Casey Affleck) spends most of his time in his All Terrain Vehicle while his girlfriend Ely (Christina Ricci) loves setting off explosives for kicks. Cale (Ethan Suplee) only has one thing on his mind — becoming the town's deputy. Sandy (Sara Gilbert) is the outsider in the group.
Skye (Kate Hudson), a teenage television star, arrives in town with her pop culture professor father (John Heard), who is interested in seeing the town's main claim to fame — a giant pink ice cream cone, the world's largest. When a tanker from the cola company spills what the FBI considers to be a toxic substance on the highway, they find themselves quarantined with the rest of the town. Initially neither Skye nor Baxter's kids welcome being thrown together.
Margaret Mead once defined an ideal community as one that has a place for every gift. It also could be a place that is big enough to honor every idiosyncratic person. As written and directed by Morgan J. Freeman, this quirky and endearing film celebrates the ways in which people can bond together, share dreams, and change their lives in the midst of a crisis. Or to put it another way, sometimes even strange bedfellows make good neighbors.