Believability grinds to a halt in 'Clockstoppers'

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You can't change the laws of physics, but that didn't stop the makers of "Clockstoppers" from trying.

This "science fiction" movie for kids is so full of nonsensical science it actually seems more appropriate to call it a fantasy film. And parents, beware: "Clockstoppers" won't do anything to help your little one become a future science-fair champ; if anything, it has the potential to retard a generation's understanding of the theory of relativity.

Here's the premise, brought to us by those rigorously scientific minds at Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon: There's these watches, see, and when you put them on you start moving real fast. Now, watch this opening scene closely as a professor explains Einstein's theory of relativity using a Volkswagen Bug product placement.

The slow moving Bug, from the perspective of a fast Ferrari, seems not to be moving at all. Got it? Good. So what have we learned today, kids? Product placement plus pseudo-science makes the movie studios money.

Let's indulge the makers of "Clockstoppers" for a moment and believe their absurdly implausible idea that a human body accelerated to the speed of light could walk around town and cause mischief.

And let's say this human body looks a lot like this movie's hero, Zak Gibbs (Jesse Bradford), and that the hands of light-speed-moving Zak start to make trouble for a snarky meter maid. What's going to happen when Zak touches this meter maid?

Apparently, the makers of this movie were so busy toying with E=mc2 they never learned Newton's second law of motion, F=ma (Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration).

If light-speed hands touched a stationary meter maid in real life, the sight would not be pretty. In this movie, they readjust her positioning so that she is writing a ticket for her own vehicle.

Of course, this is all supposed to be science fiction. But when "science fiction" takes advantage of the fact that its intended audience hasn't yet had much science, it does a disservice to the audience and to the genre.

To make matters worse, the movie's plot is as shoddy as its grip on the basic laws of motion. But don't worry — if you don't need the laws of motion, why do you need a plot?

Eli Sanders: 206-748-5815 or esanders@seattletimes.com.