Set in the last months of the 20th century, people feared that at midnight on December 31, 1999, a global Year2K-induced computer meltdown would occur.
Middleschooler Beverly Moody (Gemma Brooke Allen) lives with her grandmother, Gail (Julie Bowen), a USPS mail carrier. They only have each other, as Beverly’s parents died in a car accident when she was two years old. Kim, her mother, was only 16 when she was born.
Talking about her daughter makes Gail sad, so she avoids Beverly’s questions about her. She works extra shifts to keep busy and make money for Beverly’s college fund. Over-protective, Gail is fearful that she could lose Beverly like she lost Kim. Beverly is lonely, and is regularly bullied at school by two boys.
Beverly finds her parents’ mixtape “Love Riot,” but the tape ‘gets eaten’ by a walkman and cannot be played. So, she’s on a mission to track down the songs from the mixtape to find out more about her parents. She hopes listening to the songs will make her feel connected to them, who were only a bit older than she is now when she was born.
The local record store is run by initially unfriendly Anti (Nick Thune), (as in anti-everything and everyone). But he is impressed with the list. When he asks “Vinyl or CD?”, her response is “I only have a Walkman.” He peers out the window, and she asks what he’s looking for. “A DeLorean with a flux capacitor” (referring to the time traveling car from Back to the Future, to find cassette tapes as they are becoming obsolete).