A time-travelling 80s throwback film that tries to marry action spectacle, family-friendly snark and sentiment to varying degrees, The Adam Project sees Ryan Reynolds reunite with his Free Guy director, Shawn Levy, as Adam – a jet pilot from 2050 who travels back to 2022 to try and stop his father, played by Mark Ruffalo, inventing time travel.
The Reynolds of our present-day encounters his young teen version, an equally sarcastic if bullied Walker Scobell; together they have to try and stop their father from creating some algorithms that allow evil Catherine Keener’s tech conglomerate magnate from ruining the future. The only trouble is that Ruffalo died some years previously – so they have to go back in time again to 2018 to find him. There’s a lot of high stakes here, and a lot of ripoffs from other films – notably Terminator – which The Adam Project acknowledges. The vibe of 80s films like The Last Starfighter and Explorers is evoked but without the charm.
Tonally, the film veers from improvised sarcasm – the trademark Reynolds persona – to unfortunately unearned moments of emoting over bereavement and grief. Jennifer Garner does her best to evoke some genuine feeling as Adam’s mother, and Ruffalo (despite more or less playing Bruce Banner, a tortured, talented scientist, again) does what he can with a part that gives him one-liners and requires him to leave his time-travelling sons because he can’t mess with the space/time continuum. Keener is wasted as the baddie, as is Zoe Saldana as the love of Adam’s life and fellow time traveller. Plot-holes are abundant, the whole timey-wimey template is a bit head-scratchy and confused; action set-pieces are solid, although the young Scobell cheering on violence feels a little unpalatable.
The Adam Project, like Free Guy, has a sentimental undertow at odds with its comedy. Reynolds’ schtick stops us from believing in his plight and his grief, making the stakes of the film non-existent. Cliches like fathers playing catch with their sons in a bid to create a moving bonding moment feel forced: part of the surface emotions of an entertaining romp that should have been far more emotionally resonant.
Dir: Shawn Levy (12A, 106 mins)
Streaming on Netflix from Fri 11 Mar
words KEIRON SELF