The Trapalhões live in a floating boat and have a miserable life. When they find an abandoned baby, they decide to raise it as if it were their own daughter. Later, when they begin to work in a circus, they discover that the child is in fact the daughter of the trapeze artist and that she was forced to surrender her daughter to a gang that negotiates children abroad. This gang finds them and tries to recover the girl who now, however, has the help of the Trapalhões to protect her.

In Petrópolis in the 1950s, the group of Nei, Cabelinho, Bambolê, Laura and Carminha is excited about the arrival of the cariocas, who symbolize the highest level of modernity.