Clockstoppers (DVD)

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I have two young cats, Winter and Summer, who usually watch movies with me. They seem to be just as fascinated as I am with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and anamorphic widescreen video presentations. In fact, they´ve sat through rather lengthy affairs (such as "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring") with rapt, undivided attention. However, when they watched "Clockstoppers", they fell asleep long before the 93-minute movie ended.

Now, I´m not saying that my cats have a firm grasp of cinema as an art form, but I AM saying that I could relate to their lethargy. Actually, I blame "Clockstoppers" for my feeling a bit "down". I began to play a guessing game with myself--how many plot points could I guess? I began telling the characters what to do about 5 minutes before they did what they were going to do. Yes, it´s true that anyone who has seen his/her share of movies will be able to do what I did while watching the flick, but that´s no excuse for its innate lack of quality. The movie is an exercise in lazy filmmaking.

Consider this: the film´s teen-aged hero has a strained relationship with his father and has a mother whose brains are scattered all over the place. Late in the movie, as a crisis of national security develops, the hero has time to argue with his father while his mother frets with hysterics. Our hero is such a nice guy that he doesn´t lean in for a kiss at the end of his first date with the new girl from Venezuela. Rather, SHE leans in for the kiss, as if the filmmakers wanted to demonstrate, once and for all, that our hero really deserves to be kissing hot chicks with accents.

Okay, here´s the plot. In "Clockstoppers", Zak (Jesse Bradford, who was much better in the awesome "Bring It On") sells an assortment of items on eBay so that he can make enough money to buy a car. Meanwhile, his scientist dad is too busy preparing to attend a science convention rather than helping his son secure a second-hand Mustang convertible. When a cool-looking watch intended for his father arrives at his house, Zak takes the watch and discovers that it´s actually a "hypertime" device, a tool that enables its wearer to move relatively fast in comparison to everything else. Inevitably, an evil corporate CEO (played by Michael Biehn of "Aliens"-fame) wants to seize the watch for his own nefarious purposes, and Zak has to save his father, his girlfriend, and the world. We´ve seen this movie before, and done better--"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" comes to mind.

Director Jonathan Frakes, better known as William Riker in the "Star Trek" universe, has directed excellent episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" as well as the exciting "Star Trek: First Contact". He seems rather lost with "Clockstoppers". The movie doesn´t really impart the sense that someone was helming it. Rather, it feels as if the project simply limped off the pages of its screenplay. Despite its high-gloss, colorful sheen, the movie is a visual bore. Yes, yes, there´s a cutesy reference to "Star Trek" when Francesca (Paula Garces) says, "Make it so, Number One" to Zak, but one-liners don´t save movies from themselves.

Aside from being a master of the obvious, the movie displays a genuinely inept sense of science. The theory just doesn´t fly. For example, the screenwriters aren´t sure exactly what the "hypertime" technology does. Does "hypertime" speed up its users? Does it slow down everything else? Does it stop time? Is the "hypertime" effect only local, or does it affect the entire world? I ask these questions because when one person activates a watch, sometimes, other people aren´t affected by it (and I don´t mean people who happen to be touching the user). Perhaps watches neutralize one another´s effects? No one knows for sure.