“The Adam Project” is the latest Netflix film to come from the Ryan Reynolds Industrial Complex (after 2021’s gimmicky “Red Notice”), and it feels fair to applaud it for what it resists. It doesn’t cram movie pop culture references down the audience’s throat; it keeps the Reynolds character’s meta-like winks to a minimum; it lets Reynolds’ fast-talking, incorrigibly charismatic smart-ass ways seem based in a complicated humanity instead of a contractual obligation from the lead star’s power. Much of this restraint makes “The Adam Project” a welcome surprise from director Shawn Levy (who previously helmed Reynolds’ “Free Guy,” another Reynolds-overload vehicle), and allows its earnest emotional core to shine through.
When this time travel story is at its best, it gives Reynolds space to convey the frustration one can have about their past, including when facing their younger self. The movie doesn’t fill out this concept with too much imagination about time travel or villains, but it does wind up with a powerful parable about healing.
“The Adam Project” is based on the pitch of getting double the Reynolds in one shot, with two versions of one man, Adam. Playing the one known as “Big Adam,” Reynolds crash-lands a spaceship from 2050 to his childhood home in 2022, where Young Adam (Walker Scobell) lives with his mother, Ellie (Jennifer Garner). His father, Louis (Mark Ruffalo), died in a car accident months ago, and this tragedy has isolated him. The scenes in which they meet are mighty endearing—“The Adam Project” doesn’t waste time in establishing how they recognize each other, and the awe, terror, and comfort the moment has for both of them. And Scobell does nicely with a riff on the trademark Reynolds motormouth, while establishing the angst he would carry decades later into being the even more self-protective Big Adam, still mad at the bullies who bloody him up at school and still mad at his father for unexpectedly dying.
These emotional ideas, still a pretty typical set-up for a family-aimed movie, are awkwardly countered with the script trying to cobble together a backstory about time travel. Big Adam comes from an era in which time travel is now normal, possible with wormholes created by pulses, but it has also become destructive and led to the death of his loved ones. Big Adam arrives in 2050 with a bullet wound and a hazy goal that becomes clearer in between the treacly moments that he takes to try to help the past (one scene with Garner, in which he tries to give her parenting advice as a fellow broken stranger at a bar, is played too on the nose to hit the spots it wants to). But the general idea of Big Adam touring through parts of his past, parallel to Young Adam learning during this adventure about how to be a better Adam, garners a distinct, formidable power. Big Adam and Young Adam both have a lot to learn, and Levy’s film is able to make that more than just cute.
After explaining with some exposition-heavy, mumbo-jumbo talk about the scientific possibility of time travel, and boosted by convenient plotting, Big Adam recruits Young Adam to help with an overall mission to stop the creation of time travel, despite what that would mean for himself. The villain behind this time travel terror is a woman named Sorien, who is the latest in the action genre’s fixation on Elon Musk-like billionaires who control scientific innovations and therefore have immense power. “The Adam Project” proves to be very pleased with itself that it casts a woman for this trope—played here by Catherine Keener—and then doesn’t put a lot of power into it, aside from noting that our well-being is often at the mercy of an egomaniac’s self-esteem. Keener’s performance matches the movie’s indifference about sci-fi design, which is all black space suits and shiny black spaceships. It all comes back to the adage, famous for comic book movies, that the story is really only as strong as its villainous force.
These gaps might not matter too much because at least Levy and his collaborators relish its big opportunities for sugar-high, camera-zipping action. There are a couple of exciting chase sequences, and numerous inspired long takes of Reynolds kicking ass. In particular, the movie takes full advantage of Reynolds’ honed action hero physicality and the shiny explosions of color and light made possible with CGI. “The Adam Project” loves to pull back and watch Reynolds fight a bunch of guys at once using a lightsaber-like weapon, causing them to burst into pieces like a video game. This crammed-framing filmmaking worked for their previous collaboration “Free Guy,” and it can be eye-candy enough here, enough to make you forget that the baddies are “Power Rangers”-level corny whenever things slow down.
Mark Ruffalo and Zoe Saldaña are also brought into the story, playing major characters who are not in Young Adam’s timeline of 2022. But the twist-driven script by Jonathan Tropper, T.S. Nowlin, Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin finds clever ways to bring them back into the fold, and both have striking chemistry with Reynolds built on emotional stakes about loss. It’s more fun to watch how they’re bought back than to reveal, but the surprises in the story become a strong testament to the story’s effectively busy nature—the sci-fi stuff can teeter between overwrought and plain junk, and its heartwarming emotions are hit-and-miss. And yet “The Adam Project” has enough emotional momentum that it can make time fly. [B-]
“The Adam Project” debuts on Netflix on March 11.