When Longfellow Deeds, a small-town pizzeria owner and poet, inherits $40 billion from his deceased uncle, he quickly begins rolling in a different kind of dough. Moving to the big city, Deeds finds himself besieged by opportunists all gunning for their piece of the pie. Babe, a television tabloid reporter, poses as an innocent small-town girl to do an expose on Deeds. Of course, Deeds' sincere naivete has Babe falling in love with him instead. Ultimately, Deeds comes to find that money truly has the power to change things, but it doesn't necessarily need to change him.