Candice Bergen plays the title character, a naïve young woman from the countryside who ventures to the bright lights of Chicago in search of an interesting career, true love, and happiness. She ends up working a meaningless job and living in a drab apartment, and she remains lonely as her romantic entanglements also misfire. She has an affair with businessman Jack Mitchell (Peter Boyle), which ends terribly. Next she takes up with Larry Moore (James Caan), but that romance also goes nowhere. Peter Hyams wrote the script and produced the film, which was released in England under the title Date with a Lonely Girl. Director Herbert Ross had much better success with romantic-comedy material in later years when he filmed Neil Simon material such as The Goodbye Girl.