Haywood Nelson

TV child star of the '70s, Dickie Roberts is now 35 and parking cars. Craving to regain the spotlight, he auditions for a role of a normal guy, but the director quickly sees he is anything but normal. Desperate to win the part, Dickie hires a family to help him replay his childhood and assume the identity of an average, everyday loser.

Bullied by classmates, a pudgy military-school student fights back by computer with the devil.

Life in a black ghetto isn't easy for 14-year-old Billie Jean Sims, who has a father in jail, a blind grandmother, and a brother with a drug habit. Growing up among drug pushers, prostitutes, and pimps, Billie Jean still has some things going for her: fierce pride, a loyal friend named Fish, and, at last, enough savings to visit her father 1200 miles away in prison.

Kathy Morrison (Harris), mother of three, who helps run a "color-blind" adoption program, wants to have another biological child. Her husband, Pete (Bologna), the head coach of the Phoenix Suns, finds out he can't produce another child. Kathy thinks about adopting a boy, Frederic "Freddie" Wilcox, and Pete does not want to adopt a boy who happens to be black. When he relents, Freddie's arrival causes an upheaval in the Morrison's neighborhood, their school, and family. Kathy's answer is to adopt another child, in this case two, a war-traumatized half-Vietnamese girl, Quan Tran, and a Hopi boy, Joe. The new extended family must now learn to live together.