It’s a bad sign that there are four people credited as writing the story, and three of them credited with writing the screenplay. That, and it’s a Nickelodeon production. It’s directed by Jonathan Frakes, who has done some good work, and his direction here is completely fine.
I guess I’m just not the right audience for this.
It’s a story that should be really enjoyable. The premise is something that everyone thinks of in their youth, and it’s a wildly tempting superpower to fantasize about. There’s a portion of the movie dedicated to that fantasy, and that works. But it’s the plot that gets in the way. Some organization wants to get the technology… I have no idea what’s happening with that plot. Even when it resolves, it doesn’t seem like it makes sense.
There are two things that hurt this movie. The first is the casting of Jesse Bradford as a teenager in this movie. He was roughly 23 when he shot this movie. His jaw is too well-formed, and he has a hint of facial hair, making him look like a college kid throughout the movie. This is remarkable, since the girl that plays his love interest is five years older than him, and she looks younger!
Anyway, the other problem is that it breaks some of the cardinal rules of sci-fi premises. Once you establish the rules, you obey them. The rules are what make a story work. The idea of hypertime is established, but then there are a bunch of scenes that break the rules they establish. In particular, there’s a scene where they use their time-freezing power to help a friend of theirs win a DJ competition (which seems to be less about music, and more about scratching records). They use this power to somehow help him do some funky-fresh dancing to impress the audience.
We see that the kids are in hypertime, manipulating his body, making him dance.
This makes no sense. If they were doing this, he would be moving inhumanly fast. If they were moving him slowly enough, they would have spent an absurd amount of time on this project (no numbers are available, but I would guess… maybe a few days).
The biggest problem is that there’s a scene that is supposed to fulfill the promise of the premise. We see the couple going around, having fun with their newfound powers. But it’s boring. It’s a lot of dumb trickery, and nothing that interesting. This might be able to engage a young kid, like pre-teen. But the rest of the movie is so dull that it might be hard to keep their attention that long.
It’s hard for me to judge this too harshly though. I got a clear feeling that I wasn’t the intended audience.
One other thing - the soundtrack for this is hilariously a relic of the times. Blink 182. The Cranberries. Nickel back, New Found Glory, Third Eye Blind, Lit, Sugar Ray, Uncle Kracker covering Time After Time, and over the credits… Smash Mouth.
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