Plot

16-year-old Charles loves to photograph. A cute girl's photo ends up in his camera. He later sees the older Laura singing in a bar. He takes many more photos of her and ends seeing her again, wishing to help her career.

Charles, a 16-year-old amateur photographer, accidentally takes a picture of Laura--and falls in love with her when he develops the film. He finds out that she works as a singer in a bar but is about to be thrown out. Although rejected at first by the 23-year-old, he wants to help her and starts an ad campaign behind her back, which has unexpected results.—Tom Zoerner <Tom.Zoerner@informatik.uni-erlangen.de>

Sixteen-year-old Charles Cummings (Jon Cyrer) is obsessed with photography and sets up a shot early one morning on a pier in San Francisco, California. When an arguing couple walks in front of his camera, Charles yells at them to move and is reminded how much he hates taking pictures of people. As soon as the couple leaves, he resumes his shot of the harbor.

Arriving back home, Charles encounters Ken (Jeffery Tambor), his mother's latest boyfriend, and makes a snide remark during their introduction. As Charles prepares for school, his mother, Joan Cummings (Ann Wedgeworth), tells her smart-aleck son to show more respect to guests.

That evening, Charles examines his photographic negatives from the pier and sees a shot of the woman (Demi Moore) who was arguing with her boyfriend. He is stunned by her beauty and develops enlargements of her face to cover his bedroom wall. However, his inquiries about her identity lead nowhere. Meanwhile, his older brother, Leonard (Peter Frechette), arrives in San Francisco to introduce his latest fiancée, Susan (Elizabeth Daily), and persuades Charles to join them in the North Beach district. There, the underage Charles enters a nightclub using his brother's identification and realizes the band's lead singer is the woman from the pier. He starts snapping photographs of her until a fight ensues as the bouncer tries to eject him. Before police escort him out, Charles learns the woman's name is Laura Victor.

The next day, Charles sneaks away from the apartment without his mother noticing and returns to the club. He finds Laura again arguing with her boyfriend, Scott (Scott Getlin), about his decision to abandon the band to become a studio musician. After Scott walks out, Laura persuades club owner Jake Lewis (George Wendt) to give her band a chance to prove their talent without Scott. Charles overhears the conversation while hidden behind the bar and follows Laura from the club as she goes to an aquarium. He shows her the pictures from the pier and offers to take more photographs for her portfolio. Preoccupied with her struggling career, Laura is not interested and says goodbye.

However, Charles later finds a way to charm the beautiful singer. He takes Leonard's bachelor party guests to watch her and the new band perform at Jake's club, which would otherwise be empty. Later, Laura stops by Charles's high school to thank him and invites him to her loft for a photography session. When Charles arrives, Laura is depressed over news that Jake has hired another band for the club. Charles lifts her spirits by taking her on his moped scooter to various San Francisco landmarks as backdrops for his photos.

At the end of the day, Laura is hungry, but the two have only fifty cents between them. She changes into another outfit and brings Charles along as they sneak into a wedding reception. Laura and Charles drink until they are intoxicated. After observing the two suspiciously, Gus Sosnowski (Hamilton Camp), father of the bride, demands that Charles and Laura pay for everything they have consumed or he will contact police. Charles tells Gus that his date is famous, and arranges for Laura to sing for the guests. Charles photographs Laura on stage as she performs a romantic ballad, impressing the crowd and Gus.

Afterward, Charles is even more awed by Laura's talent and encourages her to incorporate more popular standards into her repertoire, but by the time he takes her home, she is again despondent about her future and asks him to leave. Driving home, he gets an idea to jump-start Laura's singing career. Using the cash he has been saving to begin his own photography career in Milan, Italy, Charles buys advertising space on 150 taxi cabs to publicize her image. Instead of job offers, however, Laura receives prank calls or inquiries about her "escort service."

On the street, people wave and know her name. She is dumbfounded until she sees an advertisement on the top of a taxi, showing her face and the words, "Laura Victor She's the Best! 555-1012." Furious, she pulls Charles out of class and tells him to get rid of the ads immediately. He tries to explain that he only wanted to help, but she walks away. When Laura later learns from the taxi service that Charles spent $6,000 on the advertisements, she realizes he gave up his Milan trip for her and feels guilty about her reaction. In the meantime, Charles stops by the loft while Laura is away and leaves a note of apology.

That night, Jake Lewis visits Laura and shows her a newspaper article reporting the story behind Charles's advertising campaign. Ever since the article was published, mentioning Laura is a singer at the club, Jake has been receiving numerous calls for reservations and is desperate to rehire her. She agrees, and in front of a sold-out audience, Laura focuses on singing ballads, thrilling the crowd as well as a record executive in attendance. Between sets, she hurries off to find Charles and is told by his family that the teenager is missing. She leaves a confidential note for him, which his brother, Leonard, tucks away for safekeeping. Later that night, Leonard searches for his younger brother and finds him passed out in an alley.

At Leonard and Susan's wedding, Charles, as best man, finds Laura's note inside the ring box and interrupts the ceremony to proclaim that the singer loves him. He rushes to Laura's loft, and the two embrace. She is excited after signing a contract with Atlantic Records and thanks Charles for making the opportunity possible. However, Charles is disappointed that she must leave for Los Angeles, California, the next day, then becomes angry when she calls him her "best friend." The teenager accuses Laura of playing with his emotions, and rereads aloud her note that ends with the words, "I love you." Crying, Laura is upset that there has been a misunderstanding about their relationship. He asks to kiss her goodbye and is pleasantly surprised when Laura begins to undress. He telephones his mother to say that he will not be returning home that evening.

At the airport the next day, Laura assures Charles that many women will love him and gives him a final, passionate kiss. Although at the moment, Charles does not feel he will ever love another woman, the experience with Laura has left him more self-assured, and he finally decides to approach Mona (Jennifer Tilly), a nerdy classmate who has been flirting with him throughout the film to ask her out on a date.