A time-travel action comedy with a number of lovely moments of sweetness throughout, The Adam Project is a film that manages to deliver what you expect from it, yet also makes one or two decisions that prove mildly surprising, considering how by-the-numbers you may expect it to be.
Ryan Reynolds is Adam, a man who travels back in time to 2022. His vehicle is damaged, as is he, and it won't begin the self-repair program until a healthy Adam can command it. Which means Adam needs help from his younger self (played by Walker Scobell). Young Adam is currently being a bit of trouble for his mother (Ellie Reed, played by Jennifer Garner), mainly due to him grieving the loss of his father (Mark Ruffalo) just over a year before. There are bad people trying to capture Adam and take him back to his own timeline, headed up by Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener), but Adam has made his leap into the past because he thinks the timeline has already been corrupted. He doesn't want to be in 2022 though. He wants to be in 2018. And young Adam may need to join him on the next part of his journey.
Director Shawn Levy has been delivering easygoing hits for a couple of decades now, giving us films such as Cheaper By The Dozen, The Pink Panther, the three Night At The Museum movies, Real Steel, and, most recently, Free Guy. That's not to say that you necessarily view him as a great director, and let's not be too quick to forgive him for The Internship, but he's a relatively safe pair of hands who manages to work well with comic actors. Between their previous collaboration and this one, he may well be the person who helps Reynolds deliver his best, non-Deadpool, work (although he's also now directing the third Deadpool movie, which doesn't feel like an obvious match, but let's wait and see how that goes). This is definitely up there with his better films, and it's easily one that provides a bit of something for almost everyone.
Writers Jonathan Tropper, T. S. Nowlin, and Jennifer Flackett have a very mixed filmography between them, from The Maze Runner movies to Nim's Island, and TV work that includes Banshee and Big Mouth, but they seem to have worked well together to craft something that provides a perfect mix of laughs, action, and heart, with enough science to allow for cool tech, and to allow for the plotting to work, without getting bogged down in too many conversations about the timelines. There IS a set approach to time-travel here, explained well enough, but it's an approach with rules that allow the whole thing to be feasible. And also allows Reynolds to enjoy another big magnet set-piece, as he does seem to love his big magnet set-pieces.
People seem to complain nowadays about Reynolds doing the same thing in every movie he makes. That's a fair comment, in some ways, but it's also something you could say about any comedic actor in their "bread and butter" roles over the past three or four decades, at least. I like his work, and he's excellent here. Scobell, in his first film role, gives him a good run for his money though. Often just as quick-witted and quick to open his mouth, Scobell has all the smart-ass attitude, but with the attitude of being a cute young kid to underline the occasional punchline/insult. Garner and Ruffalo do very well in the role of the loving parents, viewed in very different ways by the two Adams because of how the loss of one parent affected their lives. Keener is a great menace, flanked by a strong and capable fighter named Christos (played by Alex Mallari Jr), and she has a great way of trying to persuade older Adam that things can be fixed, they can go back to how everything was, while prepping weaponry to destroy him if he continues to disobey her requests. There's also a small role for Zoe Saldana, once again being a perfect combination of loveliness and badassery.
It's an overused compliment when it comes to modern family entertainment, but this really does feel like something that could have been made in the late 1980s. The quality shines throughout, from the music and cinematography to the performances, and the sweetness is offset by the sense of fun, and the odd swearword thrown around. There are also one or two moments that may make you cry, even as you realise how easily you're being emotionally manipulated. This is definitely a film worth making some time for.
8/10
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