The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest

Plot

Andy Kasper is a marketer who quits his job for something more fulfilling. He gets hired at LaHonda Research Institute, where Francis Benoit assigns him to design the PC99, a $99 PC. He moves into a run-down boarding house where he meets his neighbor Alisa, an artist. He puts together a team of unassigned LaHonda employees. The team includes: Salman Fard, a short, foreign man with an accent who is hacking into CIA files when Andy meets him; Curtis "Tiny" Russell, a massively obese, anthropophobic man; and Darrell, a tall, blond, pierced, scary, germaphobic, deep-voiced man with personal space issues who regularly refers to himself in the third person.

The team finds many non-essential parts, but cannot reach the $99 mark. It is Salman's idea to put all the software on the internet, eliminating the need for a hard drive, RAM, a CD-ROM drive, a floppy drive, and anything that holds information. The computer has been reduced to a microprocessor, a monitor, a mouse, a keyboard, and the internet, but it is still too expensive. Having seen the rest of his team watching a hologram of an attractive lady the day before, in a dream Andy is inspired to eliminate the monitor in favor of the cheaper holographic projector. The last few hundred dollars come off when Darrell suggests using virtual reality gloves instead of a mouse and keyboard. Tiny then writes a "hypnotizer" code to link the gloves, the projector, and the internet, and they're done.

But immediately before he finishes, the whole team (except for Tiny, who is still writing the code) quits LaHonda after being told that there are no more funds for their project, but sign a non-exclusive patent waiver, meaning that LaHonda will share the patent rights to any technology they had developed up to that point. After leaving LaHonda, they pitch their product to numerous companies, but do not get accepted, mainly because the prototype emagi (electronic magic) was ugly, and something always seemed to go wrong during the demonstration of their product.

Alisa, whose relationship with Andy has been growing steadily, helps improve the emagi's looks, which allows the team to have their callback with an executive. They agreed to give her 51% of their company in exchange for getting their product manufactured and for getting Andy's Porsche bought back, which he had to sell to raise money to build a new emagi after leaving LaHonda. Unfortunately, she then sells the patent rights to the emagi to Francis Benoit, who plans to sell the emagi at $999 a piece and reap a huge profit.

The team interrupts the meeting in which Benoit will introduce the emagi to the world. It introduces an even newer computer that he and his team developed and manufactured at LaHonda, which was in a state of disaster when they arrived. It was a small silver tube that projected a hologram and lasers which would detect where the hands were, eliminating the need even for virtual reality gloves. Andy then reminds Benoit of the non-exclusive patent waiver, which had been Benoit's idea in the first place.

Cast

Adam Garcia as Andy Kasper

Rosario Dawson as Alisa

Anjul Nigam as Salman Fard

Ethan Suplee as Curtis "Tiny" Russell

Jake Busey as Darrell

Enrico Colantoni as Francis Benoit

Gregory Jbara as Hank

Dan Butler as Lloyd

Linda Hart as Mrs. 'B'

Shiva Rose as Torso

Chandra West as Robin

Rob Benedict as Willy

Heather Paige Kent as Claudia Goss

John Rothman as Ben

Reggie Lee as Suit

Reception

Box office

The film's opening Weekend Gross was $2,535 in USA (30 June 2002).

The feature film had limited release in New York and Los Angeles. Its domestic gross was just $5,491, making it one of the greatest flops in movie history.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 11% of 9 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 20 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.