Every warning light on the dashboard of Calvin Campbell's aging Saab is blinking. But the pro baseball player turned unemployed alcoholic isn't paying attention. Not only does he not notice the literal warning lights as he careens down the road, his drinking problem means he's missing the figurative warning lights in his life, too.
His 17-year-old daughter, Katie, for instance, begs to spend time with him. But he's more comfortable hanging out with his bottle, a habit that's propelled his girl into the clutches of a conniving cad named Colt.
Calvin knows that boy's bad news. In his daughter's mind, however, Dad is worse news. "You're a pathetic little man who lives a pathetic little life," she tells him after picking him up drunk from the police station one night. She has no interest in his slurred apology, and she scorches him with this bitter shot: "I just want to make sure you know I've given up on you."
Calvin's perilously close to giving up on himself, too, of course. But then something unexpected happens: He meets Produce.
Produce is an employee at the local ValuMart. An employee who happens to have Down syndrome. We never learn his real name, but we certainly learn how he got his supermarket moniker: Produce knows produce. Every SKU number. Every detail about fresh products. "A tomato is a fruit," Produce corrects Calvin one day after the older man accidentally steps on one and apologizes for smashing what he thinks is a vegetable.
And at the end of that encounter, Produce hugs Calvin, saying, "Have a magnificent day."
It's been a long time since Calvin Campbell's had a magnificent day. Hugs have been in equally short supply. But as his unlikely friendship with Produce deepens each time he goes to the store to buy booze—which is every day—it prompts Calvin to ponder the possibility of something other than the drunken, disappointing and dysfunctional life he's drifted into.
Naturally, Calvin's got to hit bottom before he pays any real attention to those flashing warning lights—and there's a lot of drama on the way down before he takes his first redemptive steps back up.
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