Matt Leland (Chris O'Donnell), a responsible teen living in Seattle, meets Casey Roberts (Drew Barrymore), who has just moved from Chicago. Casey is beautiful, eccentric, and rebellious, and she and Matt begin a relationship. However, it soon becomes apparent that Casey's impulsiveness isn't just a personality trait - she's mentally ill, and her parents want to institutionalize her. Matt, who thinks there's nothing wrong with Casey, runs away with her.
Mad Love contains examples of:
- As Himself: The band 7 Year Bitch perform as themselves during a club scene.
- Bridal Carry: After Casey has a screaming panic attack in a restaurant bathroom, Matt carries her out of the restaurant and back to the nearby motel.
- Bringing Running Shoes to a Car Chase: After Matt and Casey crash their original car, they steal someone else's. The owner fruitlessly chases after them down the highway.
- Cry into Chest: Casey has a breakdown and cries into Matt's chest in several scenes.
- Hand-or-Object Underwear: After Matt and Casey have sex next to the car in a forest, they lie together, with both of their arms covering her chest.
- Interrupted Suicide: Casey ends up in a psychiatric hospital after she overdoses on sleeping pills and her parents find her unconscious in the bathroom. Her parents, who don't yet realize she's mentally ill, think she's doing it to get back at them for setting rules.
- Lens Flare: Visible during a scene of Matt and Casey driving.
- Love-Obstructing Parents: Casey's dad Richard (Jude Ciccolella) thinks Matt is a bad influence on Casey. After Casey tries to swim the Puget Sound to be with him, Richard bans the two of them from seeing each other.
- Missing Mom: Matt's mom left when he was nine. He found out after she failed to pick him up from school and he walked home in the rain.
- Moment Killer: Matt and Casey are about to kiss in front of his fireplace when Matt's nine-year-old twin siblings Adam (T.J. Lowther) and Joanna (Amy Sakasitz) arrive home, bickering loudly.
- Naughty Birdwatching: Matt is stargazing through a telescope when he sees Casey jet skiing. He is so taken with her that he starts spying on her house, watching her dance to music in her room. When Casey visits his house, she looks through his telescope and finds it pointed at her room. She's furious, but forgives him surprisingly quickly.
- Percussive Maintenance: Casey gets her car started by repeatedly kicking it.
- Promotion to Parent: Since Matt's dad Clifford (Kevin Dunn) is always busy with work, Matt does most of the work of parenting Adam and Joanna.
- Room Full of Crazy: Casey spends a night cutting out magazine pictures of eyes and taping them all over the walls of a motel room, telling Matt that the eyes will watch over and protect them.
- Skipping School: Casey persuades Matt to cut chemistry class and spend the day driving around with her. Later, she pulls the fire alarm in the middle of the S.A.T.s so they'll get rescheduled and she and Matt can go to a book signing. This time Matt doesn't go with her.
- Tantrum Throwing: After a fight with her parents about whether she should go to boarding school or not, Casey storms to her room and throws things around.
- Trust-Building Blunder: While Matt drives along a windy mountain road, Casey covers his eyes and gives him directions on how to drive. With Casey's help, Matt successfully passes a truck (causing the driver to do a Double Take), but a minute later the two of them almost get into an accident with another truck, causing Matt to swerve off-road and crash and rendering the car useless.
- Your Makeup Is Running: During Casey's restaurant breakdown, she cries mascara down her face.
