The film opens in 1972 with a single mother and her two children, and a teenage son and nine-year-old daughter, running a boarding house. The mother is hurt in a car accident and hospitalized. As a birthday present, her son and his band drives her Pink Cadillac to Cleveland, Ohio kidnaps her favorite singer, Elvis Presley. He gets the owner of a local pizzeria who looks eerily like Elvis' mother to pose as his mother's ghost as a distraction, and then drugs Elvis with chloroform. Elvis awakens in the boarding house. He and the boy do not get along at first. The boy disrespects Elvis, accusing him of selling out to Vegas. However, the boy and Elvis get to know each other, and they became friends. The film concludes with Elvis playing "Heartbreak Hotel" with the boy's band at the high school talent show.