Spanning 20 years and 2 continents, Mary and Max tells of a pen-pal relationship between two very different people: Mary Dinkle, a chubby, lonely 8-year-old living in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia; and Max Horovitz, a severely obese, 44-year-old Jewish man with Asperger’s syndrome living in the chaos of New York City. As Mary and Max chronicles Mary’s trip from adolescence to adulthood, and Max’s passage from middle to old age, it explores a bond that survives much more than the average friendship’s ups-and-downs.