Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

GarnettTeenage The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Steve Pulaski Clockstoppers begins by introducing us to Quantum Tech Corporation (QT Corporation), which has developed a new project called "Hypertime," allowing a user's molecules to reach lightning speeds, giving the appearance that everything around him or her is standing still. "Hypertime" can be activated by wearing a particular wristwatch, and despite the NSA stopping the project before it is fully completed, QT's CEO Henry Gates (Michael Biehn) still wants the watch for his own power.Unbeknownst to Gates, one of the leading scientists behind the project sent the watch to Dr. George Gibbs (Robin Thomas), a teacher at his son Zak's (Jesse Bradford) school. Zak, who keeps pining his father for a hot new Ford Mustang, winds up getting his hands on the watch, and, upon discovering its true powers, uses it to impress Francesca (Paula Garcés), the new girl at school from Venezuela. It doesn't take long for the two of them and their other friend Meeker (Garikayi Mutambirwa) to abuse the watch's power and cross paths with Gates, who desperately wants that watch back.Clockstoppers is simple entertainment; precisely the kind of medium-budget production you could envision Nickelodeon Movies putting out in the early 2000s. It takes a lot of similar vibes from Back to the Future, and it focuses on familiar teen tropes in order to momentarily capture the attention of pre-teens. It has an attractive lead actor with a rebellious swagger, a beautiful foreign exchange girl who sticks closely by his side after initially showing her claws, and the rowdy sidekick, who adds a more comedic spin on his buddy's serious perils.Throw that all in a blender and you get Clockstoppers, basic cable's best friend. A film good enough to take up a two hour time-slot with commercials, but not good enough to have any retaining or lasting value outside of basic cable entertainment. Despite both Bradford and Garcés boasting enough charisma to make them worthy of the two leading roles, it's largely the way the film surprisingly handles the material in an unexciting way, right down to crafting a boring villain who feels about as uninspired and as cookie-cutter as they come. For a film about stopping time and momentarily stunning and transforming the space-time continuum, it's a film with shockingly low energy.Bradford and Garcés do manage to be pretty charismatic screen presences throughout the film, making you wish they did more of these tween adventure films for the sake of their appealing nature. This was a time when Disney and Nickelodeon films based around brand new, live-action properties were being churned out and nearly every young, white actor was getting their shot at centerstage for whatever project the studios wanted to concoct. Clockstoppers isn't uniquely bad, which in itself is a bit of a disappointment because at least it would provide me with something noteworthy to say. Unfortunately, the film is just a simple case of fast food filmmaking, movies you can quickly watch and just as quickly forget.Starring: Jesse Bradford, Paula Garcés, Garikayi Mutambirwa, Robin Thomas, and Michael Biehn. Directed by: Johnathan Frakes.

SnoopyStyle Dr. Earl Dopler (French Stewart) is forced by Henry Gates (Michael Biehn) to work on a mysterious project. Teenager Zak Gibbs (Jesse Bradford) is scrounging for money to buy a car. His father (Robin Thomas Grossman) is a college professor and his former student Dopler sent him a watch. Zak finds the watch in his father's stuff. He and new girl Francesca (Paula Garcés) discovers that the watch slows down the world until it comes almost to a stop. Meanwhile the NSA is closing down Gates and his research. They're afraid of national security implications. There's also a problem with aging in hypertime. Dopler tells Gates that he sent a watch to Gibbs. Gates is now after the watch.As a kids spy action movie, it's relatively functional. Jesse Bradford is playing the brash young teenager. He's not funny and he's not particularly likable. He's just the stereotypical self involved teen. It's less flashy than Spy Kids but is still intended for a tween audience. It's stupid at times and at other times, it's a reasonable movie. There is some action and some spraying of liquid nitrogen. It's a relative mixed bag and not recommended for the older teens.

Andy (film-critic) "Clockstoppers" is one of those simple PG plots which involves a boy, a watch, and no need to corrupt the system. A kid, unlike you or I, finds a watch from his super-genius father that can literally slow down time (actually, speed up his molecules so that time seems to be going slower). Instead of stay in that time forever, growing old and experiencing the powers of "invisibility", he uses it to win over the heart of an unknown girl and stop the world from catapulting into utter annihilation. Yep, something I would do if I could stop time. Like any other film of this nature, I am sure you know what ultimately happens in the end. Helmed by "Star Trek's" very own Jonathan Frakes, "Clockstoppers" boasts the talents of Jesse Bradford, Michael Biehn, and French Stewart – with a cast like this, who needs enemies. Using amazing CGI to bring this story from the page, where Frakes falls short are the characters and his inability to grapple with the technology he is filming. I am not going to cover my issues with the molecular speed-up, because I am sure they have been nauseatingly been said before, but they did force you to consider the unmentioned possibilities. Why wasn't this whole film done with slowed time? How could some inanimate objects fly through the air in slow time, while others fit into the pattern of going slow? Why didn't Bradford fall through the floor? Age issues – don't make me go there! Again, this could be a whole topic of conversation, but instead, lets talk about the other pivotal downfalls of this film, and how they related to me feeling decent after watching this.I must admit, Frakes does a decent job behind the camera. He has learned from his acting lessons and can tell a complete story. Without the science fiction plot holes, the story itself for "Clockstoppers" was pretty cliché, yet straight forward. He didn't try to overdo it, while his actors might have attempted to gobble every line they could, Frakes kept the story simple and the CGI impressive. I have to applaud him for his work here, he could have made this a very dark story, but instead kept it suitable for a teen audience. This wasn't the original "Agent Cody Banks" in any way, but it did attempt to stand on its own, and I must applaud Frakes for his attempt. The acting, as mentioned before, was horrid. French Stewart was possibly at the lowest point of his career with this film. His attempt to be a honest scientist was goofy at best. He was never mad, just loony with his approach to this character. Jesse Bradford was middle of the road. Consistent with the standards of this film, he never went above where we wanted him to be. Oddly, his Ebay selling reminded me of another character from "Transformers", but I don't want to think the two films plagiarized. Julia Sweeny, well, just don't make me go down that tunnel. Paula Garces was middle of the road as well, she played off Bradford with ease because there was nothing they needed to attach themselves to. Could I be any more vague? When I finished watching this movie, I wasn't feeling upset or happy about the results – this was a mediocre film, and I can applaud it for staying within that genre.Sometimes I listen to music half my age – this film is a prime example of music that is half my age. There was an attempt to take it even further up the tween channel by employing the music of Blink 182 to heavily dominate the scenes of joy, empowerment, or victory. There was the overuse of Smash Mouth, which seems to plague every tween movie today – but oddly, that was allowed this time. Typically, I find myself yelling about how one-sided these releases tend to be. Focusing their marking towards a singular audience instead of just pushing the boundaries, but with "Clockstoppers" I felt their average outing calmed me. It worked I shouldn't have worked, but it did. Frakes subdued me, and I cannot argue with him. The special features surrounding this film were pathetic as well, staged "behind the scenes" which only showed how "fun" a film like this could be – it was disgusting. The music videos didn't fit, and the Saturday Morning interruptions also included were vile as well. See this language, yet I am going to give this film at least three stars. See, Frakes did dupe me.Overall, I gotta stop this review before I stick myself in a deeper hole. Agents with no names, bad villains bent on total domination using everything in their arsenal outside of the weapon of choice, a cool watch that may have sold well over the holidays, and plot holes the size of Miami. I hate these features on a film, but again, "Clockstoppers" filled a hour and a half of couch time well for me. I never laughed, but I never got bored with this story. Call me a quitter or a lackey to the cause, but "Clockstoppers" never came out of its shell, and I am happy for that. It was pathetic, but delightful in the same sense. I cannot suggest this movie to friends, but if it rained one afternoon and we needed something to kill the time – I think "Clockstoppers" would find its way back to the DVD player! Thank you Frakes – you duped me again! Grade: *** out of *****

jdavidbakr I actually read about this movie in a trade magazine where they talked about how they did the effects, and had been interested in seeing it since then. When I saw it on Joost, I decided to finally watch it. It's younger than I expected, but overall I had a good time with it. There are a couple of things that bothered me about it, though, and here they are, hence the spoiler warning.I love science fiction and love taking an implausible idea like this and making a set of rules about it. The filmmakers had well-defined rules, I thought, about how the watch worked. And then they promptly broke them in one completely unnecessary scene. The scene I'm talking about is the DJ scene, where the kids move the DJs and make them dance. Now, according to the rules set up, the watch doesn't make the people invisible, it makes them go really fast. So if you sit there and hold a pose for what would be one second in normal time, people would be able to see you. Yet they operate the DJ's invisibly as if they were puppets (also way too fast, if they were really moving them at the speed that they were then their dance moves would be a blur); that scene had the feel to me that someone who didn't write the original screenplay decided to add to get some extra human element into the film, because everything else was so well thought out. The second thing that bothered me initially was the car chase in hypertime, but they did explain that the cars were in hypertime (and since it's a molecular level phenomenon that did end up fitting into the rules set by the filmmakers.) In spite of this, though, I do recommend it and give it a 5 out of 10 rating. Between that one scene, and kind of a lame attempt at creating family tension between the father and son, it only gets 5. But it does get 5, not 3 or 2, because it still was a fun movie.