After a big fight, a couple wakes up with an unbelievable problem: he can't speak and she can't hear anything. Doctors and exams are useless. A female Zen Master and a very special plant come to their aid.
Antonio goes to Rome to represent his fellow peasants, to request a highway that will be built in their region. But the guy is mastered by 'la dolce vita' and wastes the money entrusted to him for his mission. When Peppino is sent to to find out what happened, he lets himself be trapped by the gentle grip of 'la dolce vita'
Antonio, a former variety actor, keeps his daughter in an excellent boarding school by organizing small scams with his friend and colleague Felice. Commissioner Malvasia good-naturedly persecuted him. When their respective unsuspecting children fall in love, the two fathers make peace.
Asso (Ace), the best poker-player in town, was killed in his wedding night, because he won too much against a bad loser. In the "final" game in heaven the clerk on duty also lost, so Asso can come back to this world as a ghost to search for a good man for his wife (widow). Who is good enough for the wife of Asso ?
Broke, and armed only with his sense of humor, middle-aged Gianni lives with his mother in their old apartment. The debts are mounting, but if Gianni looks after the building manager's mother during the Ferragosto, a mid-August holiday, all will be forgiven.
The film is about an old fashioned Italian with moral values of the 1930/40's , who has to find a wife in the modern, woman's liberated society of Australia of the 1960/70's.