SYNOPSIS

NYU Biology professor MAX KLEIN has a serious phobia against germs, viruses, and even fungi. One night Max is set to propose to his girlfriend JANICE, but the moment is ruined when he refuses to put the engagement ring on her finger because she hasn’t properly washed her hands. Angry at Max’s behavior, Janice breaks up with him.

After the breakup, Max’s faculty buddy STUART FONDA tries to cheer Max up by taking him to an artsy, downtown party. There Max meets PHILOMENA (PHIL), an unconventionally beautiful and feisty young woman who fractures common English expressions (e.g., “It’s raining cats and hogs”; “What am I, chopped onions?”) because “their normal forms are too boring”. Max isn’t thrilled with Philomena’s aggressive come-on, but when she twists her ankle he feels obligated to help her home. When it's too rainy to get a cab to her apartment in Queens, Max reluctantly takes her to his place nearby.

Once there, Phil makes very deliberate sexual overtures to Max, but he avoids having sex with her and instead discourses on the world as a dangerous virus and fungi factory. Thinking Max is a total nut job, Phil heads for the door, but before she leaves she tells him that she lied about living in Queens – she actually lives around the corner. What she doesn’t tell Max is that it wasn’t happenstance that they met at the party. Her cousin Stuart put her up to throwing herself at him to bring him out of his slump, with the promise that Max was way too germ-a-phobic to have sex with a strange woman - no matter how cute she was. Also unbeknownst to Max is that contrary to her claim that she owned a catering shop, in reality she is a brilliant Ph.D. student in botany doing her dissertation at Columbia on “erotic fungi”.

Still obsessed with getting Janice back, Max meets with therapist DR.GLORIA RANK, who suggests that Max try to meet with her face-to-face so they can resolve their issues. The problem is Janice won't see him, so he hatches a plan to run into her at her company's annual picnic. To make her jealous, he needs someone cute like Phil at his side. Max retrieves Phil's number from the trash and asks her to meet him. Reluctantly, Phil agrees to go with him after considering the possibility of some good fungi hunting in the park. She reveals her Ph.D status and admits that the catering shop actually belongs to her grandmother. This throws a different spin on how Max views Philomena.

At the picnic, Phil is surprised to see her ex-boyfriend, artist FRANCOIS, who still has an obvious sexual interest in her. Max feels pangs of jealousy. Meanwhile, Max isn’t happy to see Janice with the handsome, blond DIRK. Later, both couples compete in a set of picnic games – but Max refuses to bob for apples in what he considers a giant toxic brew, causing them to lose the contest and the ten grand cash prize. Max is puzzled when Phil leaves upset.

Later, Max learns that Phil has run out of scholarship money to complete her dissertation, and the picnic prize money would have closed the gap. He tries to find Phil at her Grandma IDA’s catering shop, but when she’s not there, he decides to order two grand worth of appetizers  hoping this will partly make it up to her.

Meanwhile, Dr. Rank has introduced Max to the concept of lucid dreaming so he can dream up an encounter with Janice and resolve his obsession with her. But in Max’s first lucid dream, Phil keeps popping up, crowding Janice out. When Rank insists this means that Max has more pressing issues with Phil than Janice, Max says that it must be because he feels guilty about the lost prize money.

As Max expects, Phil delivers his catering order – but his apology to her doesn’t go as well as he had hoped. Phil’s feelings for Max soften however, when she learns that in addition to providing back-door money to her through Ida, he secretly added her to his Research Grant as a paid lab assistant. Max thinks this paid-in-full act will assuage his guilt and allow him to lucid dream of Janice without images of Phil interrupting. Yet, when Max’s subsequent lucid dreams feature Phil and her erotic fungi, Rank insists that Max’s issues with Phil go beyond money and guilt and leads Max to consider that he may be using his virus phobia to mask his fear of commitment.

As Max and Phil begin working together in the lab, they struggle to ignore the growing chemistry between them. Max begins to ease up on his need for the NASA-style protective gear he wears, while Phil admits that her speech pattern is a conscious, protective device to keep guys distant, still feeling like the chubby high school girl who was ridiculed as the “Philsbury dough girl”.

In his next lucid dream, Janice deserts Max, while Phil saves him from falling off a cliff and tells him there’s nothing to fear. Max invites Phil to dinner to find out how she really feels about him - but she won't give him a straight answer. Deflated, he's now ambivalent when Janice calls wanting to see him, but they meet for dinner, reconcile and decide to marry. Max doesn't know that Phil is in the restaurant watching and then flees in anguish when she sees Janice kiss him.

The next day, Phil fails to show up at the lab for work – leaving Max a message saying she’s gone fungus hunting. Max and Janice quarrel again and Janice decides to break up with Max for good. She accuses him of being in love with Phil; Max denies it.

When Max complains about Phil’s disappearance to Rank, she suggests that Phil must have learned about Max’s engagement. Max admits his feelings for Phil and acknowledges that she has no idea that he feels this way. Rank urges Max to go after Phil, or maybe lose her forever. He hurries to see Grandma Ida, who tells Max that Phil has gone caving upstate with the sexy Frenchman, Francois.

Spurred by love and jealousy, Max arrives at the caves. A RANGER tells him they’re dotted with hot bubbling pools that are “viral traps,” and that many have died from the germs. In spite of this, Max charges headlong into the cave and finds Phil - without Francois - but on the other side of a huge pond of bubbling fungi. Max freezes, but then letting nothing - not even his phobias - stand between him and his true love, splashes through the muck to Phil. At last, he admits he loves her. They embrace – but when Max asks if she loves him, Phil playfully answers, “Maybe.” But her smile is a definite “Yes”.