This is not a mass market film. It is quirky and funny, but satires all the little things that many people hold sacred in their little cities and neighbourhoods. If you like films such as Miss Meadows, The Tao of Steve or Being John Malkovich, then this is likely one you will want to watch. Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable and often hilarious film.
A chemist and his assistant make a groundbreaking discovery. They manage to make butter directly from pasture grass without having to deal with either the cow or the use of dairy products. An industrialist attempts to seize the invention.
A naive Midwesterner insurance salesman travels to a big-city convention in an effort to save the jobs of his co-workers.
An Iowa pajama factory worker falls in love with an affable superintendent who had been hired by the factory's boss to help oppose the workers' demand for a pay raise.
State of Bacon tells the kinda real but mostly fake tale of an oddball group of characters leading up to the annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival. Bacon-enthusiasts, Governor Branstad, a bacon queen, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, members of PETA, and an envoy of Icelanders are not excluded from this bacon party and during the course of the film become intertwined with the organizers of the festival to show that bacon diplomacy is not dead.
A womanizing night club singer who has his pick of many beautiful showgirls tries to climb socially and break into society but soon discovers the social and class differences are insurmountable.
A retired farmer and widower in his 70s, Alvin Straight learns one day that his distant brother Lyle has suffered a stroke and may not recover. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver's license. Then he hits on the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual odyssey.
An Iowa drugstore owner becomes embittered when his son is killed in World War II. The druggist believes that the boy's life was cut short before he had an opportunity to truly appreciate his existence.