12:01

Mild-mannered Barry Thomas (Jonathan Silverman) works in the personnel department of Utrel Corporation and harbors a secret crush on Dr. Lisa Fredericks (Helen Slater), who's working on the firm's top-priority research project, a particle accelerator, with Drs. Thadius Moxley (Martin Landau) and Robert Denk (Nicolas Surovy). Tuesday, April 27, begins like any other day: Barry gets to work late, is chewed out by his bitchy boss (Robin Bartlett), flubs an opportunity to talk to Lisa in the staff cafeteria and is needled by his pal, self-styled ladies man and irrepressible-prankster Howard (Jeremy Piven). Just an ordinary day of petty humiliations and workaday frustration until quitting time, when Barry watches in helpless horror as Lisa buys some flowers from a street vendor and is killed in a drive-by shooting. The next day he wakes up and… it's April 27th again. And again, and again and again, and Barry is the only one who seems to notice. Unable to keep continue passively reliving the same day, Barry starts trying to change it, gradually figuring out how to approach Lisa while trying to figure out how to stop her from being murdered. If her death was something other than a random shooting, figuring out the motive is the key.

A romantic comedy with a scifi twist, this light, clever picture departs significantly from Lupoff's darkly despairing original story. Briskly directed by genre veteran Jack Sholder, it's well acted and thoroughly entertaining. A more faithful version of Lupoff's tale was made three years earlier as 12:01 PM, with Kurtwood Smith as the tormented protagonist. Written and directed by Jonathan Heap -- who's also credited on 12:01 -- it earned an Academy Award nomination for best live-action short. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh