BY LARRY CARROLL | I'll never forget the day when, at age nine, I went to see what was then believed to be the final Star Wars movie, entitled "Return of the Jedi". My friends and I were huge fans of the first two films, and I couldn't wait to find out whether Vader was really Luke's father, if Han Solo would ever be thawed from his carbonite prison, and how the other plotlines would be resolved. Most of all, however, I couldn't wait to go into school and talk to my buddies about how great it all was.

But that next day, in the school hallway as we hung up our jackets, we had a very different discussion than any of us would have anticipated. Rather than recreating lightsaber fights or arguing over which alien was the ugliest, each of us could only talk about one thing - Ewoks. They had ruined the whole movie! We were dismayed by the presence of these vapid little teddy bears that supposedly had the ability to defeat an army of highly-trained Imperial Stormtroopers using nothing but rocks and twigs.

The reason why I invoke the still-reviled "Ewok" name is to make a point - kids know when they're being talked down to, they know when they're being patronized, and they don't like it. The motivation behind the creation of the Ewoks - cute, cuddly manifestations of what adults thought would sell lots of toys to kids - was painfully obvious to us kids from the early eighties, and so George Lucas ended up with a backlash that still taints an otherwise fine film.

"Clockstoppers" is filled to the brim with these "Ewok" moments, created by middle-aged filmmakers who think they know what's "hip" with kids right now. There's extreme bike tricks, DJ "Scratching" contests, paintball guns, body piercing, and far too many Blink-182 songs for any one film to allow. Nickelodeon, the creators of the film and supposed keepers of all that is cool to pre-teens, appear to have sunk a great deal of money into focus groups for this film. Perhaps those funds could have been better spent on a decent screenwriter. This could be the first movie since "Cool As Ice" that was outdated before it hit the screen.

The story is about Zak (Jesse Bradford, "Bring It On"), a teenage boy who has all the usual teenager problems - he needs a girlfriend, he needs a car, and he needs to work on the strained relationship he has with his father. Dad is an inventor who is constantly developing different projects, and never has time for his son. Zak chooses to rebel against his upbringing by doing such outrageous things as playing guitar and doing tricks on his bicycle. What a wild man.

Zak has a buddy named Meeker (Garikayi Mutambirwa, "Bones") who dresses in extremely loud colors and wears a pacifier on a chain around his neck (didn't that fad go out with Flava Flav in the early 90's?). In some scenes Zak and Meeker are portrayed as the coolest guys in school, but then suddenly bullies are throwing them into garbage cans. This way their characters seem cool and the audience can sympathize at the same time.

Love blossoms for Zak when he first lays eyes on Francesca DeLaCruz (Paula Garces, "Dangerous Minds"), a girl from Venezuela who has just enrolled in his school. Francesca is beautiful, sassy, and drives her Dad's new Beemer - what more could a boy want? At first she doesn't like him, but all that changes remarkably fast, and soon Zak's life seems to be headed in the right direction.

But this is a science fiction movie, or at least seems to think it is (sci-fi normally implies a thought provoking piece of work), and so Zak's father invents a super-powered watch. The watch enables the wearer to enter "hyper-time", which is ostensibly the ability to travel across the fourth dimension, but actually just an excuse to rip off that camera trick from "The Matrix". The idea itself is intriguing and original - hyper-time speeds up every cell in your body until you're moving so quickly that everything else seems to be motionless - but director Jonathan Frakes (a veteran of Star Trek movies and TV) seems to think that one original idea is enough to carry the whole film.

When these kids first discover the watch, they discuss all the things that they could do, like maybe go to Las Vegas. And then they do none of them. Instead the kids are happy playing pranks on parking attendants and playing with water sprinklers. Once they discover the device, any shred of creativity goes out the window and is replaced by a generic subplot about an evil government agency.

This is the type of movie where Dr. Dopler (French Stewart, "Love Stinks") can watch Zak fall into the river, and then two scenes later exclaim, "You got the watch wet?" It's the type of movie where the mechanical arm from a garbage truck, built for large boxy garbage bins, can capture someone and lift them off the ground without them wiggling free. It's the type where kids can use their hyper-time watch to make people fly through the air, and no one in "normal time" questions this slightly unusual occurrence.

The worst of these has to be at the end of the film, when Zak decides to jump from hyper-time to hyper-hyper-time by pressing his watch button a second time. This means that he can walk through walls because his cells are now moving so fast. But if this is the case, then how can he still stand on steel beams and pick up objects to throw at people? Wouldn't he fall through the floor of the building?

"Clockstoppers" is an atrociously bad movie for a variety of reasons - thin characters, poor acting, a script that bends the rules whenever it wants to, and the fact that it's just plain boring - but the worst part is the patronizing attitude behind it all. The movie reminds you of that annoying uncle you had when you were a kid, the one who would pat you on the head and tell you that someday, when you're older, you'd understand but for now you should go play with your toys or something. There's no room for any type of interpretation or thought by the viewer, and every time the film paints itself into a corner, it thinks it can sneak any flaw in logic past the audience.

When a movie wants to entertain children, regardless of age, it needs to view them as more than just a demographic who will bug their parents to buy toys, sneakers and Fruit Roll-Ups. Kids, just like the rest of us, want to be taken seriously and treated with respect. While sitting through "Clockstoppers", I looked around at all the 8-12 year olds near me, bored out of their minds. Then I looked back ahead and wondered how long it would be until a fuzzy bear with a slingshot came onto the screen.

GRADE: F

INTERVIEWS WITH JESSE BRADFORD AND PAULA GARCES

What if you had the power to stop time?

That is the question posed by the new Nickelodeon film "Clockstoppers". The movie is about Zak, a high school kid whose life gets changed dramatically when he discovers that his father has invented a way to "freeze" time. It stars fast-talking Jesse Bradford from "Bring it On" and the beautiful Paula Garces, who you might remember from "Dangerous Minds".

In the film, the kids have a watch that allows the wearer to press a button that speeds up their metabolism, making everything around them seem as if it's standing still. So what would the stars do if they had this power? "If I had the watch, I would do so many wicked things to my friends and family," Garces laughed when I asked her. "No, I'd skip through traffic, I'd skip lines at the amusement park. The possibilities are endless. I'd go to Vegas. The casino thing would be cool."

Bradford had some other ideas. "If I could freeze time," he said, "I'd do a lot of naughty things that I probably shouldn't talk about. Maybe not x-rated stuff, but definitely evil and dastardly. As far as it being a useful tool, I'd never be late for anything again in my life, and that would be the bomb." So, they'd both think about doing some evil stuff, but nothing too bad - well, maybe one. "I could cheat on tests too," Bradford added, considering the dark side for a moment, "That would be so cool."

Bradford and Garces make a very believable, great-looking couple together on screen. Asked about their chemistry, Jesse said that, "Working with Paula was great. When I'm making a movie, I just try to become friends with the person (to create chemistry). That was very easy with her. She's very cool. She's smart and we're from kind of the same area. And she helped me with my Spanish."

And how did Paula feel, working with an up-and-coming teen heartthrob? "I had only seen Jeese in 'Hackers', but I thought he was great in that. Jesse was the perfect choice for Zak. He's very charming, and a great actor."

Paula said that she was dying to do this film from the first minute that she eyed the script. "When I first read Francesca, I fell in love and knew I had to have the film," she remembered. "It was a godsend, the way Francesca was very specifically written. She was the regular girl next door, who just happened to be from Venezuela. Which meant she was me personally, it meant no ridiculous accent, no stereotypes. In the film, we actually make fun of some stereotypes. She's no damsel in distress, she kicks some butt and voices her opinion. Her ideas actually work, she has money and she's very well educated. I think that's why Zak falls in love with her."

Following the smash success of "Bring It On", Jesse Bradford is a hot commodity in Hollywood. When I asked him if his life had changed, he said, " I got followed, like a week ago. I was crossing the street to go to the supermarket and these chicks recognized me, these fifteen or sixteen year old girls. So they were following me, but on the other side of the street. I could see them and it was really funny. I'd stop, and they'd stop. I'd start, and they'd start." So, is he concerned about people like this? "It's sort of presumptuous to start worrying about stalkers. If it hasn't happened yet, I'm not going to worry about it. So I might get chased through a mall -- that's not really so bad now, is it?"

With all these teen girls chasing him, and all these high school movies feeding the flames, I asked Jesse if he ever got afraid of being typecast. "Yes, I actually do. Being typecast is certainly a concern. But I have a new movie coming up called "Swimfan" that will probably be rated R. It's kind of like "Fatal Attraction" for kids. Lots of violence, lots of sex. It's set in high school, but this is another thing I'm working on -- not pretending to be five years younger than I really am."

Paula, also, is going in a very different direction with her next movie. "I just finished a film called 'Marci X' with Lisa Kudrow and Damon Wayans. I play Damon's girlfriend in the film. It's a comedy and my role is kind of a twist between Jennifer Lopez and Lil' Kim." Sounds interesting. So I asked her, is it a flattering portrayal of J to-tha-L-O? "I'm an actress wannabe singer/dancer/diva. You'll just have to see the movie and judge for yourself."

That sounds like a movie worth checking out. Now, if I could only get my hands on a certain watch...