In an early scene of “Clockstoppers,” a student in a college physics class is unable to complete the sentence, “Einstein’s Theory of …” And just as well, too, since any time-manipulation movie has to exist in blissful ignorance of Einstein’s theory. Not that it can’t be done, at least in the movies. “Clockstoppers” has a new twist: The traveler doesn’t travel through time but stays right where he is, and lives faster. This is closer to Einstein’s Theory of Amphetamines.
Dr. George Gibbs (Robin Thomas) has invented a way for a subject to live much faster than those around him, so that they seem to stand in place while he whizzes around. He is like the mayfly, which lives a lifetime in a day–and that is precisely the trouble. The system works well, but experimenters age so quickly that they return looking worn and wrinkled, like Keir Dullea in “2001,” who checks into that alien bedroom, and doesn’t check out. Gibbs needs to iron out a few kinks.
Before he can perfect his discovery, intrigue strikes. His teenage son Zak (Jesse Bradford) is informed by the friendly Dr. Earl Dopler (French Stewart) that Gibbs had been kidnapped into hyperspace by the evil and scheming millionaire Henry Gates. Dopler is named after the Effect. I have no idea how they came up with the name of Gates.
Zak has just met the beautiful Francesca (Paula Garces) a pretty student from Venezuela, at his high school, and they find themselves teamed on a mission to venture into hyperspace, rescue his father, outsmart Gates, and return without becoming senior citizens. (That’s if hyperspace is the same place as speeded-up-time-space, and frankly the movie lost me there.) To assist in their mission they use a gun which fires marbles filled with liquid nitrogen, which burst on impact and instantly freeze their targets. That this gun is not fatal is a fact the movie wisely makes no attempt to explain.
“Clockstoppers” has high energy, bright colors, neat sets, and intriguing effects as the speeded-up characters zip around. There is a time when Zak outsmarts characters who are merely speeded-up by speeding up while in speedspace, or whatever it’s called, so that he whizzes around the whizzers while emitting a kind of pulsing glow.
Film Review for Clockstoppers
”What if you had the power to stop time?” ask the advertisements for ”Clockstoppers,” a new science-fiction adventure tale from the movie division of Nickelodeon, the children’s cable channel. To the film’s intended audience of tweeners — the newly identified demographic category that lies between fading childhood innocence and the full hormone rush of high adolescence — the answer to that question would be as obvious at it is to the film’s young hero, Zak (Jesse Bradford). The power to stop time is, of course, best used to impress girls — like Francesca (Paula Garces), the ravishing Venezuelan exchange student who has just arrived at Zak’s generic suburban high school.
Zak’s amazing power comes from the reconfigured digital watch he has found in the basement workshop that belongs to his father (Robin Thomas), a famous university physicist. With the push of a button, the watch speeds up the metabolism of whoever is wearing it. The world seems to stand still, but the wearer of the watch can still dart around in it, doing whatever he likes while remaining invisible to everyone else.
If ”Clockstoppers” had been made for a slightly older audience, Zak’s first stop would probably have been the girls’ shower room. But as directed by Jonathan Frakes (the actor best known as Commander Riker on ”Star Trek: The Next Generation”), the film’s spirit owes more to the old-fashioned idealism of Tom Swift and the Hardy Boys than it does to the rowdiness of ”American Pie.”
The time-stopping watch turns out to be the property of a sinister high-tech think tank, whose director (Michael Biehn) has kidnapped both Zak’s father and his most promising graduate student (French Stewart) and put them to work turning the technology to military use. If Zak can rescue them in time, he’ll not only save the world from an unspeakable scourge but also repair his damaged relationship with his distant dad — and, clearly most important, get his first kiss from the duly awed Francesca.
It isn’t easy to recognize Jesse Bradford, who plays Zak, as the sensitive, brooding child who was the protagonist of Steven Soderbergh’s 1993 ”King of the Hill,” though he has grown into a light and likable juvenile lead. As a filmmaker, Mr. Frakes displays no particular ambitions for this project, but he has delivered a competent, unpretentious entertainment destined to fill the after-school slot at shopping mall theaters across the country.
Clockstoppers (2002)
Directed by: Jonathan Frakes
Starring: Jesse Bradford, Paula Garces, French Stewart, Michael Biehn, Robin Thomas, Julia Sweeney, Lindze Letherman, Linda Kim, Jennifer Manley, Deborah Rawlings
Screenplay by: Rob Hedden, J. David Stem, David N. Weis
Production Design by: Marek Dobrowolski
Cinematography by: Tim Suhrstedt
Film Editing by: Peter E. Berger, Jeff Canavan
Costume Design by: Deborah Everton
Set Decoration: Brana Rosenfeld
Art Direction by: Kevin Kavanaugh
Makyaj Tasarımı: Linda Arnold, Vivian Baker, Kenny Myers
Music by: Ralph Sall, Jamshied Sharifi
MPAA Rating: PG for action violence and mild language.
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: March 29, 2002
Visits: 166
