While setting up a business in Paris, American widower Michael Andrews (Gene Kelly) has placed his adolescent son, Danny Andrews (Bobby Clark), in a Swiss boarding school as Mike has no time during this phase of the business set-up to look after Danny on his own. Mike receives distressing news that Danny has run away from the school with another student, Parisienne Janine Duval (Brigitte Fossey). This news does not sit well with either Mike or Janine's divorcée mother, Suzanne Duval (Barbara Laage). Suzanne believes Danny is a delinquent influence on her daughter, while Mike believes Janine is an enabler as non-French speaking Danny could not manage outside the school without some language assistance. They learn from another student that Danny is heading to Paris to show Mike that he is independent enough to live in Paris with Mike, while Janine tagged along because she sees herself as Danny's girl and as she has not seen her mother in some time. As the children have not been gone long and as there is only one road between the school and Paris, Mike and Suzanne, both who took the train to the school, decide to drive back toward Paris together to look for the children. With little to keep them going, Danny and Janine, although having some issues along the way, seem to be able to get help from whoever they meet despite the police on the lookout for them. On the other hand, Mike and Suzanne seem to get into one misadventure after another, fueled largely by a clash of the American versus French cultures, and in one specific incident, a British meatloaf thrown into the mix.