Paul Blart lives in West Orange, New Jersey, with his teenage daughter, Maya, and mother, Margaret. Aspiring to join the New Jersey State Police, he trains at the police academy, but his Hypoglycemia medical condition causes him to collapse, therefore failing the exam. To shape up for his career, Blart works as a security guard at the fictional West Orange Pavilion Mall.
Paul Blart (Kevin James) narrates his several misfortunes and his hard recovery. His wife Amy (Jayma Mays) divorced him six days into their marriage and to feel better, Paul takes pride in patrolling the West Orange Pavilion Mall. Two years later, his mother Margaret (Shirley Knight) was killed after being hit by a milk truck. Four years after that, as Paul narrates "he had officially peaked", he receives an invitation to a security officers' convention in Las Vegas and begins to believe his luck is about to change. His daughter Maya Blart (Raini Rodriguez) discovers that she was accepted into University of California, Los Angeles and plans to move across the country to Los Angeles, but in light of her father's invitation, she decides to withhold the information for now.