Word About Biehn

Aimed primarily at the teenage market, Clockstoppers provides 90 minutes of pleasant and harmless entertainment. Its plot follows the adventures of young Zak Gibbs, who comes into possession of a watch that is capable of sending people into "hypertime," accelerating their movements to the point where they become invisible. Typical teens, Zak and his girlfriend can't resist the temptation to have fun with the device by using it to manipulate the world around them.

When Zak's scientist father is kidnapped the situation turns serious. Not only do the villains want the watch back, they also are desperate to solve the puzzle of premature aging caused by molecular instability in their hypertime process. Naturally, no help is to be gotten from law enforcement, so Zak and friends set off to save Dad and thwart the villains.

Clockstoppers is an energetic, bright, and good-natured film with attractive and engaging young stars. Nicely acted, it also benefits from some clever writing and winsome characters. Zak's harried mother, for instance, dumps her micro waved TV dinners into serving bowls so her meals look more homemade. And when Zak is about to be arrested, his sister's great concern is to have his room while he's in jail. The film does suffer from some lags in pacing, and the obvious effort to keep violence to a minimum--the film is co-produced by Nickolodeon--also serves to undercut the tension of what are supposed to be dire circumstances for our heroes.

Michael plays lead baddie Henry Gates, contracted by the government in a "black ops" job to develop hypertime. With the government about to pull the plug on the project, however, it becomes clear that Gates hasn't been quite on the up and up with his employers and now must work frantically to refine the process before shutdown. Michael is just fine as Gates, and he looks great. Unhappily, his role isn't as prominent as I'd hoped, and we're given little background about Gates and what makes him tick. Still, he is intriguing enough to make us want to know more about him. If we're lucky, perhaps there will be a sequel to enlighten us, with Michael's role much expanded. We can only hope.