(UTV | CANADA) – Reynolds plays Adam Reed, who returns from the future to destroy time-travel research and meets his younger self.
The plot becomes strained at times but an appearance by Adam’s father, who died when he was a child, brings tears to the eyes. This is a warm hug of a movie.
A caption opens Shawn Levy’s The Adam Project. “Time travel exists. You just don’t know it yet,” it reads. The year briefly is 2050, and we join Ryan Reynolds’ Adam Reed in a spacecraft that soon zooms its way through a wormhole.
He arrives back in 2022, and right into the world of his younger self (newcomer Walker Scobell). The adolescent Adam lives with his mother, Ellie (Jennifer Garner), and both are still mourning the loss of Adam’s scientist father, Louis (Mark Ruffalo).
When the two Adams meet, it doesn’t take long for the younger version’s mind to be blown. His frame of reference is the cinema, about the only way he can process this miraculous encounter.
Films like Back to the Future, Star Wars and The Terminator are all name-checked, while Marvel’s current penchant for the “multiverse” is also alluded to when younger Adam theorizes that this is how his older self has arrived. “A multiverse? My god, we’ve watched too many movies,” quips Reynolds’ Adam.
These early scenes as the two Adams get acquainted are among the film’s high points. They don’t particularly like each other and get on each other’s nerves, creating an amusing love-hate dynamic. It brings to mind that old cliché of what you’d tell your younger self if you could – in this case, be nice to your mother, because she’s suffering too.
Scobell, making his screen debut here, comes off brilliantly like a pint-sized Ryan Reynolds, nailing that slightly smarmy delivery that the actor has made his trademark.
With grown-up Adam on a mission to destroy the research that’s been done into time travel for fear of it falling into the wrong hands, he’s left temporarily stranded in 2022.
The plot starts to groan as he gets followed from the future by a robotic army, their unhinged leader (Catherine Keener) and even his own squeeze, Laura (Zoe Saldana). But Levy, who worked with Reynolds on the video-game-inspired Free Guy, directs the action with gusto.
The final act comes dripping with moist-eyed sentiment as Adam’s father, played by Ruffalo with his usual warmth, makes an appearance. Themes of loss and love loom large, with Levy clearly influenced by Amblin-era Spielberg, in a story about the ties the bind.
Ultimately, it’s not quite as moving as it thinks it is, but The Adam Project is still a warm hug of a movie – and a valiant stab at the paradoxical pleasures of time travel.
The Adam Project will start streaming on Netflix on March 11.
