Plot

During a cryogenics test, a pilot frozen in 1939 awakes in 1992 but time is running out, as his body starts to age rapidly.

A 1939 test pilot asks his best friend to use him as a guinea pig for a cryogenics experiment. Daniel McCormick wants to be frozen for a year so that he doesn't have to watch his love lying in a coma. The next thing Daniel knows is that he's been awoken in 1992.—Rob Hartill

In 1939, Captain Daniel McCormick (Mel Gibson) is a test pilot in the United States Army Air Corps. After a successful run and a subsequent crash landing in a prototype North American B-25 Mitchell bomber, McCormick greets his longtime friend, scientist Harry Finley (George Wendt). Finley confides that his latest experiment, "Project B", has succeeded in building a prototype chamber for cryogenic freezing. The following day, just as McCormick is about to propose to his girlfriend, Helen (Isabel Glasser), she goes into a coma following an automobile accident, with doctors doubting she will ever recover. McCormick insists he be put into suspended animation for one year, so he will not have to watch Helen die.

Fifty-three years later, in 1992, 10-year-old airplane enthusiast Nat Cooper (Elijah Wood) and his friend Felix (Robert Hy Gorman) are playing inside the military storage warehouse housing the chamber, accidentally activating it and waking McCormick, leaving Nat's coat behind. McCormick awakens and escapes from the warehouse before realizing what year it is. He first approaches the military about his experiences, but they dismiss him as crazed; McCormick becomes more determined to learn what happened to him.

McCormick follows the address on the jacket back to Nat, befriending him. While hiding in Nat's treehouse, he rescues Nat's mother Claire (Jamie Lee Curtis) from her abusive boyfriend Fred (Eric Pierpoint), slightly injuring his hand in the process. Claire fixes up his wound and a bond develops between the two; she allows McCormick to stay, and he and Nat build a simulated bomber-plane cockpit in Nat's treehouse so that McCormick can teach Nat how to fly. McCormick passes out and is hospitalized, where he discovers that his body is failing as his age begins to catch up with him.

McCormick tracks down Finley's daughter Susan (Millie Slaven), who informs him her father died in a fire before she was born. She gives McCormick her father's journals, detailing the cryogenic process, and Finley notes disclose that the rapid aging is irreversible. Susan also reveals that Helen is still alive, but they escape before the FBI, who is now after McCormick, catch up with him.

Claire drives McCormick to an air show and commandeers a B-52 bomber to fly to Helen's seaside-lighthouse home, with Nat stowing away on board. Claire gives Harry's journals to the FBI, for their plans to replicate and modernize the experiment. McCormick suffers another ageing attack, forcing Nat (who is now slightly familiar with the plane's controls after his simulated-training session with McCormick) to land the plane near Helen's house. The now-elderly McCormick reunites with the also-gray-and-wrinkled Helen and asks her to marry him; she happily accepts, proving that true love does indeed last forever. McCormick introduces Nat to Helen, and the film ends with the three joining hands and going for a seaside stroll together.