Flanders, Hispanic Monarchy, 1616. The inhabitants of the small town of Boom are busy organizing the annual local festivities when the arrival of the Duke of Olivares, who rules the country on behalf of the King Philip III of Spain, is announced. While the male citizens cowardly surrender to panic like rats on a sinking ship, the brave female citizens, led by the bold wife of the burgomaster, decide to become the best hosts the Spaniards can ever meet.

A one-night stand with an entertainer threatens to destroy a woman's marriage after she gives birth to a black child.

An honest but naive young man is manipulated by a gang of crooks who use him as as a cover for their misdeeds. His honesty will be rewarded though and he will find the way to the heart of his beloved.

Georges Gauthier is an electrician who lives with his mother and his sister Madeleine. He is the son of a womanizing singer who made his mother miserable. For all that, Georges is attracted to show business all the more as he falls in love with Jeanne, the daughter of singer Lormel. Georges is spotted by Cartier, the manager of the Folies Concert and makes his debut as a singer under the assumed name of Jean Papillon.

Not content to be an austere judge, M. de Méricourt is also a domestic tyrant. He terrorizes his son René to such an extent that the young man has dared not confess to him that he has married. As can be guessed, a lot of confusion ensues.

It is one thing to open a beauty salon (which Edwige and her young lover Gaston have just done) but it is another to keep it on its feet.To best promote their speciality, fountain-of-youth treatments, Edwige decides to apply to the letter the old slogan "It pays to advertise" by posing as... Gaston's mother, a sixty-year-old woman, miraculously grown younger.

Grégoire Vachette is a bashful librarian, forced to listen to the daily boasting of his colleague Courgéan, a great seducer according to what he says. But when, while on holiday, Grégoire meets beautiful Madeleine, the shy young man becomes fired up. Back to his place of work, he can't help communicating his enthusiasm for Madeleine, so much so that he too is taken for a Don Juan. But Madeleine is not for him. Nevertheless, his unexpected change of attitude will have helped him to conquer the heart of Denise, a typist who loved him in secret.

Perrichon, a well-off self-satisfied bourgeois, goes on holiday with his wife and his pretty daughter Henriette. He is more or less willingly followed by two young men, Armand Desroches et Daniel Savary, who both have fallen in love with Henriette after meeting her at a ball. The Perrichons's vacation will be eventful with, among other misadventures, two accidents (one real, the other fake) and the threat of a duel.

The irresistible rise of a young provincial, Miquette, who, having risen to Paris, will experience success in the theater and love in Hollywood with a very attractive tennis player.