Jeff Marx (Steve Guttenberg) has just graduated from college and is now looking to study medicine and become a successful physician. However, his MCAT scores are nowhere near high enough to get him into any accredited American medical school. With a little research and a lot of high jinx, Jeff gets a chance to study medicine abroad in a small Latin American dictatorship, governed by the tyrant Dr. Ramon Madera (Alan Arkin). Madera has a keen interest in how the medical students behave, and Jeff quickly finds out that he is under special 'doctor's orders.'