The back to the future for a new generation this movie is not. Although, if your age falls into the preteen/teen category, you might find this flick charming if not entertaining since Clockstoppers stars Jesse Bradford (Bring it On) as teenager Zak Gibbs. This movie has your boy meets girl, loses girl, gets girl scenario, but pranks, danger, special effects and improvable science combined to make for a fun film that was directed by Jonathan Frakes.

Zak is your typical teenage boy. He loves cool cars, girls and stunts on his bike (I guess this is where the Back to the Future reference makes more sense, since the Michael J. Fox character loved, cool cars, girls and doing stunts on his skateboard). Zak is trying to get the attention of his scientist/teacher father, Dr. George Gibbs (Robin Thomas of The Contender). But unless you are one of his students or a project, his time is pretty scarce. One of the good doctor’s former students, the rapidly aging Dr. Earl Doppler (French Stewart formally of Third Rock from the Sun), sent his teacher a watch to have him help solve a problem. This problem is hypertime and rapid age progression. The watch slows down time for everyone else, except those wearing or in contact with the watch. While in hypertime for an extended state it speeds up your aging process. In the mean time the NSA, and no I don’t mean NASA, is confiscating the research and equipment to this project. They are unaware that the watch actually works and only believe it is still in research. The company behind the research led by Henry Gates (Michael Biehn of The Art of War) has other plans that include getting the other watch back, which is now the toy of you guessed it, Zak.

This film was written by Rob and Andy Hedden and contains a few storyline flaws in this fantasy, science fiction, action film that make the plot completely unbelievable and not at all plausible. Other than that, the action and potential teenage romance, as well as, father-son conflict make for a fun movie. Remember though, this is a fun movie if you are under the legal drinking age because a cold beer might be more entertaining for you. Also appearing in Clockstoppers is Paula Garces as the girl toy Francesca DeLaCruz, Julia Sweeney as Mom and Garikayi Mutambirwa as Meeker. I gave Clockstoppers a seven on the About-Movies.com scale. This is keeping in mind, I was once a teenager.

Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:48:00 AM

Click Here to get back into frames.