igh-school student Zak Gibbs (Bradford) has been saving his money to buy his first car: a cherry-red Mustang convertible. He'll scour junk shops for things like a manual typewriter, then turn around and sell them on eBay as "a crashproof word processor."
Zak wants the car in part so he can catch the eye of a comely Venezuelan exchange student, Francesca (Garces). But when he tries to get his university physics professor father (Robin Thomas) to co-sign a loan, dad thinks Zak's just wasting his time and energy. Frustrated, Zak thinks dad's really more interested in his science friends and former students, like ex-hippe Earl Dopler (Stewart).
When dad heads off to a science conference, Zak discovers a watch in dad's workshop. When he heads over to Francesca's house for their first date, Zak finds out that the watch is no ordinary timepiece. When activated, the yellow watch slows everything around him to a virtual halt—including Francesca. Zak and Francesca have stumbled on "hypertime."
In town, the pair revel in the power hypertime gives them to change things around. But they soon realize that the watch is not theirs to toy with. Dopler, a fugitive from the top-secret Quantum Technologies corporation, has sent the watch to Zak's dad in an effort to solve some of its problems. And now agents from QT want their watch back.
The agents, led by the nefarious Henry Gates (Biehn), break into Zak's house. Narrowly escaping, Zak and Francesca must locate Dopler to uncover the mystery of the watch. Meanwhile, Gates decides that the best way to capture Zak and get the watch back is to kidnap Zak's dad.
Life is far too short to watch this clock
Clockstoppers is the first in a planned series of live-action genre family films from Paramount and its sister network Nickelodeon, the kids' cabler better known for its highly successful animated fare. Like Nick's recent computer-animated Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Clockstoppers is envisioned as the first step in an eventual franchise.
Under the direction of Trek veteran Frakes and starring the appealing Bradford (Bring It On) and newcomer Garces, Clockstoppers is a light entertainment aimed squarely at the pre-teen market. It offers a few dazzling effects, a little Afterschool Special family melodrama, some energetic if juvenile humor, tepid action and a few chaste moments of teen romance. Other than that, Clockstoppers is hardly worth the time.
The film has an intriguing premise, borrowed from Rod Serling's classic Twilight Zone episode, "A Kind of Stop Watch." It asks the SF question: What would you do if you could stop time? Visual effects supervisor Michael Fink has given hypertime the feel of reality, using mimes as extras, a few Matrix-y wire stunts, motion-control cameras and lots of green-screen computer effects. Water from a garden sprinkler hangs in mid-air while Francesca brushes it away. Zak is able to palm a bee in mid-buzz.
But like Hollow Man and other SF movies before it, Clockstoppers sets up its premise and does little with it, beyond having Zak and Francesca pull a few lame pranks in town. One big set piece—involving a "scratching" competition by Zak's DJ friend Meeker (Garikayi Mutambirwa)—will elicit laughs only from the very young or very innocent.
Instead, Clockstoppers builds its story around a supersecret government military contractor (yawn), a scowling bad guy (a slumming Biehn), a bit of errant technology and a comic-relief miscreant (Stewart, in full-on 3rd Rock annoying mode). A viewer needn't be from the future to know exactly where this movie is going at all times.
