'Clockstoppers'
Time bandits

THIS ENTERTAINING SCI -fi adventure film directed by Jonathan Frakes (a.k.a. Commander Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation) is based on a highly suspect idea: a physicist has built a device that can speed up a person's molecules fast enough to move him or her into "hypertime," so that everyone else seems to be standing still. Easier to swallow is the not-unpredictable story of a young man, Zak (Jesse Bradford), who winds up with the superwatch and must use it to fight the bad guys and rescue his scientist father. When Zak and his cute Argentine girlfriend, Francesca (Paula Garces), first discover the power of the device, the images of them walking through a frozen world are pretty awe-inspiring. The characters are high schoolers, though this breezy, quickly paced Nickelodeon production is really intended for preteens, with its P.G. rating and relatively wholesome depiction of boys and girls dating. Clockstoppers only really works because of a solid starring performance by Bradford (last seen as Kirsten Dunst's Clash-loving boyfriend in Bring It On), who is understated and believable as a freewheeling kid caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Sure, it's not perfect: there are several embarrassingly predictable plot setups; upper-middle-class life is depicted as hyperperfect; consumerism is fully endorsed as a means of self-expression; there are some questionable appeals to stereotype (the dragon-lady Asian woman, the spitfire Latina); and we briefly suffer through a heinous remake of Cyndi Lauper's classic "Time after Time" by Uncle Kracker. All in all, though, this is good, clean family fun, a little fluffy but enlivened by some neat special effects and some especially cool bike tricks by our young hero. (Summers Henderson)