The Adam Project Review: The Netflix Sci-Fi Movie Lets Ryan Reynolds Do His Thing

The idea that the world is speeding up is largely a lie people tell themselves to deny that they are getting older. Even on screen, perceived acceleration may be an illusion: yes, the average 21st century film has more and faster cuts than a pre-1980 one, thanks to technological developments and the advent of “MTV style”. But the back-and-forth in a 21st-century Marvel movie isn’t any quicker than that of a 1940s screwball comedy. (Actually, it could be slower.) So during Netflix’s sci-fi comedy The Adam Project may feel like an Amblin Entertainment film played at 1.5 speed to viewers who grew up watching these films, the reasons for this transcend the gruesome distortions of time.

A major factor behind the film’s Rat-a-Tat energy is star Ryan Reynolds: he’s Deadpool, for God’s sake. Racy sarcasm is a cornerstone of his brand. Writer-director Shawn Levy has previously worked with Reynolds (at 2021 Free guy) and filmed eight episodes of stranger things, So combining the two is a logical next step. When Levy and Reynolds – both co-producers of the film – play to their strengths, The Adam Project is fast-paced, light-hearted sci-fi fun that elicits a few good laughs. But at moments when undiluted sweetness is called for, the film’s slick writing draws attention.

The film begins in 2050, just outside Earth’s orbit, where Adam (Reynolds) – a classic “hotshot pilot who plays by his own rules” – prepares to steal a time-traveling jet. Adam is desperate to return to 2018, for reasons that will quickly become apparent. But he accidentally crashes in 2022, with a bullet in his side and a bio-linked ship that won’t launch until his injury heals. (The movie is full of “okay, I guess” inventions of that sort.) So he breaks into the backyard of his 12-year-old self, a smaller, asthmatic, but just as smart version of Adam (Walker Scobell).

Adult Adam needs young Adam’s DNA to launch his ship. Young Adam needs adult Adam to help him solve some problems related to the recent death of their father, Louis (Mark Ruffalo), a brilliant but neglectful physicist. So the two embark on a hilarious adventure through space (well, across town) and time (but only about five years) to stop the 2018 Louis from making the scientific breakthroughs that will make time travel a reality . Side hustles with Zoe Saldaña as Laura, the adult Adam’s plucky wife, and Jennifer Garner as Ellie, Adam’s predictably cocky mother, imply that women of both ages serve as Adam’s tempering influences. But for the most part, this story is more about Adam’s relationship with his father – and himself.

Reynolds and Scobell have winning chemistry as the two Adams, coordinating their body language and clashing with playful insults throughout the film. (A moment when the two of them giggle as Reynolds “farts” his gunshot wound is surprisingly cute.) The idea of ​​a child meeting their adult self, or an adult going back in time to right their childhood wrongs, has already been explored in other films – incl 13 further 30, Another film that cast Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo as a couple. The Adam Project‘s team of four authors is acutely aware of this fact, just as she is acutely aware that Adam is fighting with a weapon that looks a lot like a lightsaber against a villain whose plan it is to create one terminator future resembles Biff Tanner’s plan in Back to the Future Part II.

Levy handles these references more easily than, say, Ready player one, but. The Adam Project‘s purpose seems more to be to make a film in which ghost of a family-friendly ’80s sci-fi adventure than siphoning off audience goodwill towards already existing films. Apart from that, Levy stages some action straight out of the woods ET, and young Adam wears a baggy Marty McFly vest throughout the film. But again, those winks are used with the intention of creating the same kind of wonder in today’s kids that Spielberg’s films did 40 years ago, while still nodding to ’80s kid parents sitting next to them on the couch. And there are moments specifically designed to delight viewers Adam’s age, like the scene where he takes down a bevy of robotic baddies with drones controlled by his VR helmet. If that was 1989, it would have been a Nintendo Power Glove.

Maybe it goes without saying The Adam Project glides over the paradoxes of time travel and acknowledges that the two Adams hang out should unravel the space-time continuum but never really explain why it doesn’t. (primer it’s not.) That’s forgivable, considering the film moves too quickly and too happily to delve into any scientific puzzles.

But it shows how The Adam Project loses its footing when the stakes get a little higher. Catherine Keener, for example, is oddly cast as the film’s Big Bad, playing her character as neither an over-the-top supervillain nor a believable threat. (Netflix puts out some of this, too Irishman Technology to put Keener’s face on a double in scenes where she interacts with her younger self.) And a romantic interlude between Garner and Ruffalo is a little too funny for its own good.

An emotional note The Adam Project Hits perfect is Dead-Dad Schmaltz – again not surprising given the range of influences Levy works with here. Family stories are a hallmark of ’80s children’s adventure films, which are lovingly recreated The Adam Project, and it’s worth noting that the film slows down in both pacing and dialogue for the sentimental scenes between father and son(s). When it comes to more mature emotions — say, corporate greed or romantic love — the film can’t help but undermine them with defensive sarcasm. But his exploration of childhood wounds comes from a more serious place.

The years go by faster as we get older, but the hurts we suffered as children remain frozen until we address them. The form of therapy presented in The Adam Project is obviously impossible and more than a little simplistic. But in a movie that blasts out of the gate at such breakneck speed, it’s unexpectedly impressive when it comes to healing Adam’s inner child — or outer child, as the case may be. So while The Adam Project can do ET appear sluggish, his heart is in the same vulnerable spot.

The Adam Project debuts March 11 on Netflix.