Advice columnist Dan Burns (Steve Carell) is an expert on relationships, but somehow struggles to succeed as a brother, a son and a single parent to three precocious daughters. When his entire extended family gets together for a reunion in a beachfront house, he unexpectedly meets Beth (Juliette Binoche) the woman of his dreams. She is smart, funny, beautiful and she just happens to be his brother's new girlfriend. Suddenly Dan the man with all the answers, finds that the hardest advice to take is your own.