When I saw a trailer for The Adam Project, it just looked like fun. It looked like the type of movie Steven Spielberg or Robert Zemeckis would make in the eighties – a light and wholesome adventure for the entire family. And how right was I?!
Cheeky little bruiser Adam Reed (Walker Scobell) is suspended from school, and left home alone one night while his widowed mother re-enters the dating market. Adam hears a disturbance in the shed, and goes to investigate, only for us to discover that the reason Adam is such a little smart-mouth is because he’s going to grow up to become Ryan Reynolds. Yes, Adam finds a space-pilot claiming to be himself as an adult from the future; older Adam (Ryan Reynolds), has free-fallen through time, trying to get back to 2018, but has instead landed in 2022 by mistake. So, yes again, time-travel is real, but who cares, as young Adam is more concerned with how he must get big muscles, and if it helps him with girls – you know, the important questions. Eventually, the two (who I will now call ‘Adam’ for the younger, and ‘Reed’ for the older) discuss how Adam’s late father unknowingly laid the groundwork for the eventual practicality of time-travel, and his former business partner, Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener), has been manipulating the discovery to her advantage ever since, building herself a big selfish empire. And now Sorian commands an army, out to halt Reed from ‘spilling the tea’ on her deception, but if there’s one thing Catherine Keener should’ve learnt from Get Out, it’s that you don’t spill the tea to thwart movements, you stir it ☕🤪
The Adam Project is a rampant rollicking good time, especially the first half. I got a fair few chuckles, and this is mostly due to the fact that I’m clearly not tired of the Ryan Reynolds’ self-aware schtick just yet… ‘Are we going to smoke this banana, or are we going to talk about it all day?’ 😂 ‘Shut your mouth Chuck, or I’ll fill it with Ray’s feet.’ 😂😂 – quotable quotents, that I’d like to now repeat every day! And this child actor, Walker Scobell, deserves a hearty bravo, not just for sounding exactly like Reynolds, but for the energy he brings to the movie. I’m not sure how much of the Reynolds wit was on the page, but he’s definitely appropriately cast and up to the challenge, delivering the funny, and emotional moments, really well. Personally, I’ve always adored a fixed timeline paradox for my time-travel, like the one greatly admired in the first two Terminator movies, but after Avengers: Endgame, and just from watching movies in general, I’ve come to accept other interpretations out there and I just go with it. But I’d put this movie in the Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me camp, where it’s just supposed to be fun, a means to an end, and if I start to think about the plot too long… ‘oh no, I’ve gone cross-eyed’.
You could argue, that the second half tips the scales away from the action, and goes more towards the emotional resonance resulting from catching up with long-lost Dad. It didn’t bother me, but it may be annoying to some. But by seeing Louis Reed (Mark Ruffalo) in a university setting, and talking science yet again, something else The Adam Project adds from my point of view, regarding a much bigger franchise we all know and love, is how it makes me realise the nuances Mark Ruffalo brings to the role when he plays Bruce Banner. Louis Reed and Banner are both textbook genius-types, yet Louis is way more outwardly enthusiastic, as he doesn’t have to worry about the rug being pulled out from under him every time he gets a little frustrated. And not being able to get frustrated, would make you frustrated! 😬 And since we’re talking Marvel talent, Zoe Saldana has a short and somewhat thankless role in The Adam Project, but she’ll gain some more street-cred again – I’ll always remember how Saldana played a Star-Trek-loving nerd in The Terminal, and since then she has appeared in Star Trek, Avatar, Guardians of the Galaxy and now The Adam Project; Earth is so mainstream to her. And just quickly, I’m grateful Catherine Keener plays the villain here; I just like her – in this part, as an actress, all of it.
There’re a few scenes where Sorian visits and shares the room with her younger self, and what can I say, the technology is an upgrade on Peter Cushing’s recreation in Rogue One 😶 But since Disney has excelled at using the technology to de-age since then, on Kurt Russel, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, Samuel L. Jackson, Clark Gregg, Rachel Weisz, David Harbour, and Alfred Molina, *breathe*, this looks hella wacky. It’s like they’ve used a face-swap filter on another woman, and it makes her seem like she’s got a rubber neck – Martin Short getting flattened in A Simple Wish from 1997 came to mind, and that’s a deep cut. But if I’m talking about special effects, then it probably came down to money for the movie, so allow me to soften the blow by stating that it doesn’t affect the story. And moreover, the rest of the production design is out of this world. Sorian’s minions are quite clearly a mix between metal-armoured medieval knights and Star Wars troopers, and how cool is the technique when they get blown up or disintegrate?! (I saw The Adam Project before I saw people getting pruned in Loki, which is a similar effect). Are they getting sucked into zero time? Is that what’s happening because they’ve died outside of their timeline? I love it. The early action scenes are really cool – the spaceship chase sequences and the fights with sticks that are totally not lightsabers. The house where Adam lives seems so much like a sound stage, and it would make sense considering how so much of the movie takes place there. It looks awesome; it’s so retro, and it reminds me of good times, like the farm from The Wizard of Oz.
Netflix has got themselves a winner here. As busy as Ryan Reynolds has been in the last few years, this is quite easily my favourite role of his since Deadpool. The Adam Project is fuelled by joy and wonder, and it feels like an instant classic sci-fi adventure to be remembered. And you know, they don’t often take a chance on making movie merchandise nowadays that isn’t Star Wars, Disney, or comic-book related, but if The Adam Project had a toy line of figures and spaceships, I could see myself going back in time, and bringing my younger self to the present to play with them. Additionally, the emotional hue of this movie is sharp and tender. I can’t imagine you always want such emotional swells in your sci-fi comedies but when it’s done this well, who’s going to complain? Scenes like Reed telling Adam how he regrets the way he spoke to Mum (Jennifer Garner) when he was the same age, and Reed meeting up with Mum in the bar, add depth. And to conclude, I just love how the story knows to focus on the Louis’ reaction as his son/s disappear, for a little bit, before we leap back to young Adam recalling that he should hug his Mum out of somewhere in the ether – Adam just sensed something, and snuck up behind Jen Garner for a tight squeeze; or should that be ‘sneaked’? Thanks, director Shawn Levy; great movie.
4.5
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