Clockstoppers ** (2002, Jesse Bradford, Michael Biehn, French Stewart, Paula Garcés, Robin Thomas, Julia Sweeney) – Classic Movie Review 3789

Jesse Bradford stars as Zak Gibbs, a science professor’s eager-beaver teenage son who gets hold of a watch that projects the wearer into hyper-time – where he’s moving mega fast and everyone else is almost still.

Michael Biehn plays a crook called Henry Gates who, along with his conglomerate baddies, wants to get the magic timepiece back. Paula Garcés plays Zak’s quick-witted, beautiful new friend Francesca.

Bradford’s spirited acting and the clever effects provide most of the fun in director Jonathan Frakes’s jolly children’s 2002 sci-fi adventure time-passer that doesn’t quite clock up enough thrills or excitement.

Also in the cast are French Stewart, Robin Thomas and Julia Sweeney, with Lindze Letherman, Jason Winston George, Linda Kim, Ken Jenkins and Garikayi Mutambirwa.

It is the first non-Star Trek feature film directed by Frakes. He went on to direct Thunderbirds (2004). He has a cameo as a janitor. There’s a Star Trek reference when Francesca says: ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ and ‘Make it so, number one.’

The plot in the story by Rob Hedden, Andy Hedden, J David Stern and David N Weiss is inspired by H.G. Wells’s 1901 story The New Accelerator about a scientist who develops a drug enabling him to move so fast that no one can see him, so everyone else seems frozen in time to him.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3789

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