SYNOPSIS:

Hal Driver, a recent Harvard business school graduate, is trying to work his way up in a New York investment banking firm when he learns that his parents’ family farm is in foreclosure and about to be seized by the IRS. His dad has a heart attack and Hal reluctantly returns to save the family farm. After all, he does have his MBA.

But the failing crop of sub-standard potatoes has no market. So Hal hatches a plan with two of his old buddies, Steve and Debit Cash. He convinces himself that there may be a foreign appeal to the slimy spuds and together they set out to conquer the Japanese market.

These cocky misfits create a stir in Tokyo as they promote the aphrodisiac and longevity qualities of the spuds.

They encounter Yasumi, the beautiful daughter of a Japanese food magnate, and convince her and her father that these rotting spuds could prove to be the answer to world hunger. Hal dodges Japanese government authorities and claims that the food was grown offshore in a Japanese underwater farm.

He and Yasumi are attracted to one another and the spuds only enhance their passionate relationship.

Yasumi and her dad’s team go along with the spectacle and the ante gets upped when Hamilton Steel, a powerful New York leveraged buyout trader thinks he can force a hedged position on the Japanese stock exchange. He mentors Hal through the entire joint venture-LBO process. The catch is, Hal has to actually demonstrate that he has a working underwater farm. He frantically sets out to do this by creating a fantasy farm in an abandoned warehouse, full of unusual paraphernalia and strange characters.

He is about to pull off the stunt of his life when a lab test reveals that the aphrodisiacal delicacy may be more powerful than anyone bargained for. To his horror, Hal learns that his spud could cause serious impotence or worse.

In true American spirit Hal, Steve, and Debit are not quitters. They put on the show of their life but the entire underwater Cirque du Soleil erupts in chaos. Yasumi's dad almost drowns. Hal rescues him. Forever indebted, the elder Japanese magnate wants to make the food company work and in coordination with Hamilton Steel, they pull a deal together.

Hal narrowly escapes violating Japanese trade law, saves the family farm and pays off the IRS lien but realizes in a bittersweet ending, that his big dreams may never come to pass.