Review: The Adam Project (2022)

The Adam Project

Rating

Director

Shawn Levy

Screenplay

Jonathan Troppar, T.S. Nowlin, Jennifer Flackett, Mark Levin

Length

1h 46m

Starring

Ryan Reynolds, Walker Scobell, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Garner, Zoe Saldaña, Catherine Keener, Alex Mallari Jr.

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Original Preview

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Review

When you watch a Ryan Reynolds movie, you come to expect a high level of snark. That’s his brand. Is it necessary to every storyline? No. Yet, The Adam Project turned his wisecracking into a fitting narrative device, but the surrounding film seems built on the idea that a film can get by solely on Reynolds’ persona.

The Adam Project is about a futuristic pilot who tries to travel backwards in time to 2018 to save his wife (Zoe Saldaña), who is presumed dead in a crash while trying to venture back to that time period. He inadvertently ends up in 2022 with his younger self (Walker Scobell) trying to adapt to the trauma of his father’s (Mark Ruffalo) passing. Things are compounded by a future billionaire (Catherine Keener) who chases him back in time to stop him from finding out the truth. The film then makes several comments on time travel, the dangerousness of it, and the end result of such messiness.

Reynolds does what he does best even if he brings little else to the role. His moments of pathos aren’t particularly compelling, but that’s a fault of a weak script. This is one of the hazards of screenwriting by committee and writing roles solely to shoehorn in a specific actor. It sometimes works for animated films, but for live-action features, it’s often a warning sign of things to come. Scobell does well emulating Reynolds’ attitude as a youngster and it plays quite fittingly into the narrative, but this isn’t a coming-of-age film, it’s a film about dealing with trauma and, to that end, it feels largely superficial.

For a pairing like that of director Shawn Levy and Reynolds in Free Guy, it’s a disappointment that this collaboration couldn’t have been more engaging. As entertaining as it is in certain moments, none of the reveals are earned and they are like something a terrible magician might do when revealing the secret of the trick everyone else already knows. Netflix seems interested in trying to capture an aesthetic for its films of high wattage names in movies that should be a lot more sensational than they really are. The end result is often a hodge podge of warn out clichés and actors who don’t seem to be as enamored with the project as it would otherwise seem. Think the recent Red Notice, which played along the same lines with Reynolds in the starring role while bringing in other prominent names like Gal Gadot and Dwayne Johnson. This film, like that one, tried to swing for the fences with a screenplay best reserved for the minor leagues where the expectation of success is weaker.

Even though it fails as an overall film, The Adam Project is fun in a lot of ways. That’s probably all the audience should expect from a picture like this, one released direct-to-streaming for delivery of perfunctory content meant to bring eyes to the service, but not providing the level of quality one can often find at the cineplex. The depth is superficial, the performances are mostly bland, and the actors don’t seem to be working terribly hard to overcome the script’s deficiencies. Levy doesn’t add much to the affair as the style is limited and the substance is minimal. If all you’re looking for is a good waste of a couple of hours, this would suffice, but if you’re wanting something a bit deeper about familial dynamics, you will want to look elsewhere.