Film Reviews

Clockstoppers

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: French Stewart
• Details: US / 96 mins / (12PG).

Last seen in Swimfan, Jesse Bradford plays Zak, a young chap who happens across a configured digital watch thingamajig ('molecular acceleration technology' to you, mate) which speeds up the metabolism of whoever is wearing it to such a degree that it appears time has been stopped. Of course, Zak initially has a few laughs with the watch, used primarily to impress jail bait Venezuelan exchange student Francesca (Paula Garces). But the evil corporate sort Gates (Biehn) also has designs on the device and is determined to get his grubby mitts on it, no matter what the cost.
One of those generic films that boys of a certain age think is "totally awesome"; Clockstoppers doesn't really have much to recommend it to a more cinema-literate audience. The effects are impressively rendered and the performances, banal techno-babble dialogue aside, are reasonable, but there's nothing about Clockstoppers which will appeal to anyone not part of the targeted demographic (boys between the age of seven and 14). Director Frakes makes a couple of half-hearted attempts at humour, calling the chief corporate baddie 'Gates' is an example, but ultimately there's a palpable lack of ambition about Clockstoppers

Review by Garreth Murphy