Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) and Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels), two kindly but dimwitted men, are best friends and roommates living in Providence, Rhode Island. Lloyd, a chip-toothed limousine driver, immediately falls in love when he meets Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly), a woman he is driving to the airport. She leaves a briefcase in the terminal. Lloyd, unaware that it contains ransom money for her kidnapped husband, Bobby (Brad Lockerman), and that she was supposed to leave it there for the kidnappers to pick up, retrieves the briefcase and tries to return it to her before the kidnappers can get it. However, Mary's Aspen-bound plane has already departed, which Lloyd finds out the hard way as he runs through and falls out of the jetway.