It is the New Year's Eve and the employees of an Economics Institute are ready with their annual New Year's entertainment program. It includes a lot of dancing and singing, jazz band performance and even magic tricks. Suddenly, an announcement is made that a new director has been elected and that he is arriving shortly. Comrade Ogurtsov arrives in time to review and disapprove of the scheduled entertainment. To him, holiday fun has a different meaning. He imagines speakers reading annual reports to show the Institute's progress over the year, and, perhaps, a bit of serious music, something from the Classics, played by the Veterans' Orchestra. Obviously, no one wants to change the program a few hours before the show, much less to replace it with something so boring! Now everyone has to team up in order to prevent Ogurtsov from getting to the stage. As some of them trap Ogurtsov one way or another, others perform their scheduled pieces and celebrate New Year's Eve.

Shurik Timofeev builds a working model of a time machine. By accident, Ivan Bunsha, an apartment complex manager, and George Miloslavsky, a petty burglar, are transferred to 16th century Moscow, while Tsar Ivan the Terrible goes into the year 1973.

In the southern town, a gang of "currency traders" is operating, led by the Chief and his assistant Kozodoyev. A modest Soviet clerk and an exemplary family man Semyon Semyonovich Gorbunkov goes on a foreign cruise on a motor ship, on which Kozodoyev also sailed, who must pick up diamonds in one of the eastern cities and transport them in a plaster hand. But due to a misunderstanding, instead of a swindler, an unsuspecting Gorbunkov falls in the appointed place, and a precious plaster is imposed on him. That's where it all starts...

In a small Russian town, there is a Research Institute for magic. One of the witches, Alyona Sanina, is going to marry a guy named Ivan Puhov (not a magician). A jealous Apollon Sataneev tells her boss Kira Shemahandskaya that Sanina is going to marry not Ivan Puhov, but Ivan Kivrin, whom Shemahandskaya is going to marry herself. Enraged, Shemahandskaya, who is a powerful witch, orders Sanina to forget about her Ivan and marry Sataneev instead. And this will be final unless Alyona kisses Puhov before midnight on New Year. Alyona's friends call Puhov to the rescue.