16 year old Troy Mayfield (Chris Carpenter) is a programming savant. His mother Kate Mayfield (Mira Sorvino) runs the family video game company but she doesn't want him to work there. After he gets suspended from school, he scares off his mother's angel investor. The company is in trouble. Troy fixes the company's only game created by lead programmer Jimmy Tisdale (Sean Astin). His mother gives him control of the game but his idea may be too big and time is short.
I don't know anything about the Carpenter family. This seems to be a real indie affair with this family writing a script and getting it made. I give them full marks for effort. The story has some good ideas but sadly, it also has some bad ideas. The worst is the kid decides to make a whole new game in a month. That is ridiculous. A better idea would be that he already has written the game. They could spend the time adapting it. It's still not enough time but at least, that is not beyond reason. The final solution has the same issue with unreasonable programming. Finally, I hate the programming montages. I hate the spinning around and around. It reminds of Hackers in a bad way. That move fits the silliness of Hackers but this one is in desperate need of believability. They could have steered into the low rent production by doing a simple fast forward. It's also possible for him to not just sit in front of the computer. Despite the general unrealistic world, this story has some good elements and it has a great cast. The kids are fine. This just needs to clean up the unrealistic parts.
I don't know anything about the Carpenter family. This seems to be a real indie affair with this family writing a script and getting it made. I give them full marks for effort. The story has some good ideas but sadly, it also has some bad ideas. The worst is the kid decides to make a whole new game in a month. That is ridiculous. A better idea would be that he already has written the game. They could spend the time adapting it. It's still not enough time but at least, that is not beyond reason. The final solution has the same issue with unreasonable programming. Finally, I hate the programming montages. I hate the spinning around and around. It reminds of Hackers in a bad way. That move fits the silliness of Hackers but this one is in desperate need of believability. They could have steered into the low rent production by doing a simple fast forward. It's also possible for him to not just sit in front of the computer. Despite the general unrealistic world, this story has some good elements and it has a great cast. The kids are fine. This just needs to clean up the unrealistic parts.