Twelve-year-old Carl is fed up with his father'’s single-minded pursuit of an off-the-grid existence. His dad may be brilliant, but dumpster-diving for food, scouring through trash for salvageable junk, and wearing clothes fully sourced from garage sales is getting old. Increasingly worried about what schoolmates (and a certain girl) at his new school might think of his circumstances―and encouraged by his off-kilter best friend―Carl adopts the principles set forth in a randomly discovered puppy-training pamphlet to “retrain” his dad’s mindset…a crackpot experiment that produces some very unintentional results.