Last time I
did review of the crime against imagination known as the Games Maker. Looks
like it’s a theme because here’s another one.
Clockstopers
was released in 2002. For the record, let’s take a look at some other movies
made in this period
So some good movies...
And some bad movies too,
certainly a mixed year for movies
OK, I’ll
stop the Spider-man bashing, yeesh
And it’s
time to say hello to our old friends, Nickelodeon, the life support Network
that can’t let cr*p like (recent – they were both good in their hayday)
SpongeBob or Fairly Odd Parents die but cuts the budget of Korra forcing the
production studio to cut corners with their animation. Thanks for that. This
movie was brought out by Paramount and Nickelodeon movies, remind me, what I
was it I reviewed from them before?
Ah. I see.
Excuse me one moment
Where were
we? Oh yes, Clockstoppers. Produced on a $20m budget, it made about $38m back, not really good enough and it holds a pathetic 28% on rotten tomatoes with a
30% audience approval rating. But let’s get this over with and dive in
We start
with a guy in an obviously fake beard easily making his way through an airport…
You can tell this was pre-9-11 just from that can’t you? He bribes a father for
a ticket (whilst in the fricking boarding gate no less) but as he’s about to
board the plane, he’s somehow pushed back into his van. If they wanted to go
for the effect his time has been rewound, they should’ve rewound every single
frame of his movements and not just have him thrust backwards with a lazy POV
shot.
The guy is a
Doctor Dopler, and after handing over his watch the 3 villains say it’s time he
got back to work. Time for an opening sequence that I thought died in the 90s,
a very loud pop song over a guy riding a bicycle. This is Zak Gibbis, and he’s
our main character for this story, yay! He buys a typewriter from a pawn shop
and uses clever wordplay to increase its worth on Ebay as he has an eye on a
new car.
Time for a
90s trope, an inattentive father. He’s a teacher and teaching Einstein’s theory
of relativity to his students, you know I’d figure that’d be a pretty basic
lesson. Zak interrupts proceedings. He wants his father to co-sign for a car
and we get all the inattentive dad tropes.
So, we’re
introduced to the black best friend, Meeker, who’s signed up for a DJ contest.
They see a cute girl, Francesca, who’s an exchange student or something and
after a couple of sex jokes (this is PG right?) Zak goes to talk to her and she
talks him down for being a creep.
So after
some more cycling and pop songs, Zak returns home to find his evil b*tch
sister. Time for another shocking revelation about Zak’s father. Being a man of
science, he’s unable to think with his heart. Give me a break! This is another
cliché that should’ve died by now. Also, I don’t know how old Zak is supposed to
be but a Mustang, really? I know insurance isn’t exactly mandatory in some
parts of the US like it is in the UK but… it’s a Mustang, do I really need to
explain why that might not be a great first car for anyone?
Anyway, with
his father refusing to co-sign the car until returning from a conference or
something, Zak heads to him room and decides to starve. Zak’s mother heads down
to talk to the father, he promises to make peace after locking away a watch that looks
mysteriously like the one from the opening scene, plot point.
Being a 90s
kid, he’s playing a stringed instrument because of course he is. A man from the
NSA talks to a guy named Mr Gates about shutting down his project, it’s too
powerful in the wrong hands. Kids just love scenes like this. Also he calls
terrorists ‘the Sadams of the word’ because that’s not racist at all.
Mr Gates and
his 2 partners from the opening bit head to their lab and being a cliché movie
of gargantuan proportions of course they’re not going to shut the project down.
Doctor Dopler is their captive and his been running doing hypertime experiments
with them, but there’s a glitch in their tech and he’s aged 20 years in his
week in captivity. It was the glitch the pulled him back to fix. Gates gives
him 48 hours before Dopler inadvertently mentioned he sent a watch to his
college professor for important data. Gates is a little upset over this.
Thanks to
incidents involving bitch sister (she hasn’t done much thus far, but I will get
to it) Zak ends up with the watch and now it’s time for another cliché from the
90s, stock bullies, in this case, Meeker’s DJ rivals whose names I can’t be
bothered to remember. They then go and try and harass Francesca but she blows
them off. Zak goes in to intervene and ends up thrown into a trash can (the
side, not the inside) and jesus is that can cheap because it got dented with
that light push.
He tries to
ask her out and for all intents and purposes it looks like she was going to
brush him off again but for reasons that escape me, she actually invites him to
her house. She has siblings to babysit but it’s otherwise alright.
Guess what,
the next scene transition is another pop song and bike ride? He heads to the
address and it’s a big house and she has leaves to rake. Zak uses his ingenuity
to help because he’s a lazy prick. They put the leaves in the bin but find that
it’s been knocked over, Zak volunteers to fix the damage whilst she makes
coffee. Francesca asks what time it is and he puts on the watch.
Shortly
afterwards he inadvertently activates the watch’s time stopping abilities. He
goes back to the bin and spots… a giant rat? Really? Couldn’t be any other
animal? He prods the animal and given what we learn later about how the watch
functions, that probably should’ve killed it. For some reason, he brings the
rat inside and the function resets, and there’s a giant rat in the house. Guess
it’s time to put another coin in the jar.
Look,
there’s no reason he couldn’t have showed her outside. She gets rightfully
annoyed and tries to spray him way water but he stops time and this time he
realises it. And I’ll give the movie this, the water effects are impressive.
Hold on, I think I feel some sick coming up.
Personally I’d use this advantage
to run for your very life but… He restarts time and Francesca escorts him to
the door and he uses his watch again, this time time stops for the both of
them, and we see that the watch slows time down rather than stopping it or
rather speeds them up.
Time to
bring science into the equation, they lift a wasp upwards in this scene,
obviously from their perspective they’re doing it gently but from the wasp’s
perspective it’s a jolt at a considerable speed, without the exact ratios I
can’t give exact figures but I’d say that wasp is dead, just like the rat
should’ve been earlier.
Time for
shenanigans with yet another rocking pop song. They get their own back on a
parking warden, get a guy’s nose ring caught in the wheel of a bike he was
stealing somehow, get revenge on the guy that was supposed to hold Zak’s dream Mustang
for 24 hours and get a graffiti artist to spray-paint his own face. Vigilante
justice at its finest folks! Batman would be proud. Actually, I take that back, this movie does not deserve a Batman reference.
Cut to the
DJ competition where a DJ swamp is winning so far, but it’s down to two DJs,
the stock bully and Meeker. The stock bully goes first and knocks Meeker’s
confidence enough that his DJing well, f*cking sucks. Zak and Francesca decide
to intervene, and get him start dancing, rather belittling the point of this
contest which is DJing. Despite the fact they’re barely moving, they’re still
invisible. That’s not how this works.
They explain
to Meeker about the watch and he wants to use it to do everything but Zak
doesn’t want to be grounded forever so decides he wants to give it back to his
dad. She kisses him and we get, what else, another bike transition with
obnoxious pop music, there really hasn’t been enough of that yet. He returns
home to find torch lights shining in his house. He approaches cautiously and
heads to the basement, his dad’s work has been totally trashes. He’s ambushed
and it’s time for more obnoxious pop as he runs away. He finds a van and is
pulled into the van by Gibbs who needs his help to hot-wire the van and make an
escape as he’s handcuffed to the back.
Van chase
ensues with the villains wanting them off the road. Gibbs demands the watch
back and as they fight over it time starts again. Thanks to a van they manage
to lose their attackers but on the wrong side of the road, Gibbs is forced out
and Zak has to throw the van off a bridge into the river. Now, Gibbs tells him
not to get the watch wet, and of course what with him being unconscious he
immediately does so.
He wakes up
in the hospital and his sister is awfully gleeful of the idea of him having to
stand trial for the incident (see why I call her a b*tch?) Interesting way to
go, of course now the watch is inactive we’ve lost a lot of creative potential
and we’re back to shenanigans, yay! He tries to explain the truth but of course
no-one believes him and this is going to remain the case until his father
finds out later in the movie because of course no-one phoned him yet.
He locks
himself in the bathroom and attempts to dry out the watch as the villains
arrive to take him down. Zak had managed to temporarily get the watch going,
disguise himself as a police officer and leave before the villains notice. They
contact Gates, who’s putting his face in the public eye to flush him out. He
wants Zak’s father to complete it now Gibbs has escaped.
Zak tries to
get a car from Meeker but he refuses, and that’s the last we see of him for a
while, he goes to Francesca, asking for some new clothes and money for the bus
so he can find his father. She asks him what’s going on and he says
“the less
you know about it, the better” wait, why?
You want her not to freak out, tell
her the f*cking truth, you muppet! Eventually she convinces him to be honest,
and provides him a change of clothes and a BMW convertible. A lot of nice cars
are given to young people in this movie. Francesca decides to tag along because
who wouldn’t want to run away with a wanted fugitive? Her parents... don't really seem to mind, as we don't hear from them after this scene
Zak’s
parents talk and apparently this is the first time he’s had to check his
messages. The accident happened late enough in the evening that it was dark,
and it clearly isn’t winter so the sun wasn’t down early for that reason. How
late did this conference go on until? After Doppler bribes his way into the
hotel room, the penny begins to drop with the telephone conversation. He heads
to answer the door but it’s Gates, who quickly abducts him.
Zak and Francesca
arrive soon after and uses the dumbest method to check what’s going on,
telephoning the reception desk from his room, impersonate his father and asking
if he checked out. Honestly, the response from the receptionist when she picked
up the phone answered both of his questions.
And to top
things we have a news story that refers to Zak by name, not sure that’s
entirely legal without some express permission from parents, until after he’s
found guilty, he’s still technically a minor… I think.
Zak and Francesca
end up caught and thrown into a dumpster truck by Doppler, they get their
revenge by knocking him out. To fix the watch we need another obnoxious music
beat and a science fair of sciency things where naturally they get everything
they get everything they need and decide to fix it right there for some reason.
Zak and
Francesca use a rough blueprint of Gates’ facility to work out how to
infiltrate it and rescue his father. They fix into a new watch with Zak taking
the old one to sell on ebay. Meeker decides he needs a role in this and helps
arm them with liquid nitrogen infused paintballs, liquid nitrogen earlier was
shown to slow them down.
They head in
but Doppler is too scared to go on any further, despite him being treated like
a son by Zak’s father. You have serious issues to work out don’t you. Need I
remind you, you found out a few scenes back that he was one of his father’s
students, he’s no older than you, cut him some slack! They immediately set off
an alarm and alert the guards, who are also in hypertime. We have an
‘interesting’ chase with the obligatory nut shot and I have many questions.
1. How come a bicycle can work in hypertime, to the
bike you’re peddling it so fast you’d more than likely break it.
2. Running over water bottles, wouldn’t those just
break when such force approaches them?
3. This movie, which has in idea attempted to be
routed in physics, isn’t very good with the physics, is it?
He defeats
the guards but is immediately ambushed by more guards upon arriving via elevator
and taken out of hypertime. He’s allowed to see his father and we get the
outburst of daddy issues that have building through the film. Yay… Excuse me,
I’m going to take a nap
Sorry, what
was going on again? Oh yeah, this boring as hell generic story.
The NSA have
arrived to shut the operation down but Gates decides to stall by refusing them
entry. They don’t take it well. They plan to test the molecular stabiliser, the
bit that prevents them from again, whilst in hypertime.
Zak is told
about the containers of hydrogen and has an idea, he begins banging the chair
loudly against the glass, in response the team close the shutters. He reveals
that the watch they took was the original, which they swapped over with during
the repairs, he still has the real thing. Zak’s father, who I’ve just searched
on Wikipedia is called George, has changed the access code to renegotiate for
Zak and Francesca’s release.
But Zak
locks them out. Zak uses the watch but because they were already in hypertime,
the effect is different. He’s not invisible but he can phase through solid
objects. He uses it to escape the cell, activate the hydrogen which is then set
alight to cause an explosion. George and Francesca are hidden in a convenient
safety thing. They’re about to make their escape but Dopler arrives to
delivering the finishing blow because of course he does.
So Gates is
arrested, Zak’s name is cleared (somehow) Dopler reverts to a teenage form, Zak
gets his beloved mustang and I think I’m going to throw up. Did I miss
anything? If we did I don’t care.
This MOVIE
GIVES ME RAGE ISSUES!
The movie
has a really creative premise and uses it as an excuse not to do anything
creative with it, and it’s such a disappointment, I feel less anger, more real total
disappointment.
The don’t
really develop the characters beyond tropes which is pity because plot takes a
good 20 minutes to get going that really could’ve been used to establish better
arcs for them. The villain in particular is cliché and boring.
The music is
ear-bleedingly irritating in this, how many rock-style pop songs can you fit
into a movie, none of them really serve any purpose as it’s mostly done over
transitional shots.
And again,
for a movie that really tries to explain the physics of its premise, it really,
really sucks at it. But then the special effects look good. None of the
characters are overly unlikeable, just bland. Honestly, it’s probably an OK
movie to shut up your kids for an hour. Anyone else, I would give this a wide berth.
Rage Rating
15%
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