Another would-be blockbuster that seems to have been designed by the Netflix algorithm, The Adam Project blends E.T., Back to the Future, Star Wars, Stranger Things, Avengers: Infinity War and even some 13 Going on 30 in an attempt to cater to a wide audience of thirty- and fortysomethings and the children whom they’ve faithfully raised as fanboys. Reynolds’ second collaboration in as many years with director Shawn Levy (following 2021’s Free Guy), this sentimental sci-fi adventure is a junker comprised of the spare parts of beloved genre forefathers, such that when Reynolds’ hero exclaims to himself, “My God, we watch too many movies!,” the joke is clearly a self-reflexive one. Too bad for him, and this streaming service dud, that imitation isn’t the highest form of creativity.
The Adam Project was written by four screenwriters (Jonathan Tropper, T.S. Nowlin, Jennifer Flackett, and Mark Levin) and it shows, welding together various elements that everyone has seen before in order to hit a nostalgic sweet spot. In 2050, Adam Reed (Reynolds) is an injured time-travel pilot fleeing a pursuing ship in his own craft, which he flies through a wormhole that transports him back to 2022. Unfortunately for Adam, he was aiming for 2018, although as luck would have it, he does conveniently wind up in the forest right outside his childhood home, where his 12-year-old self (Walker Scobell) is living with his mom Ellie (Jennifer Garner) following the recent car-accident death of his scientist father Louis (Mark Ruffalo). Young Adam is a grieving kid who’s constantly picked on by classmates, and as embodied by Scobell, he’s also a mini-Reynolds, dispensing one-liners like a class clown who knows he’s going to pay for his insolence, but just can’t stand to let an available opportunity for wise-assery go to waste.
Young Adam is excited to learn that he grows up to be buff, butt-kicking Adam, and since the latter can’t operate his ship because he’s injured, it’s not long before the kid is hanging out in the cockpit of a time-travel jet. He’s also aiding his adult self in his mission to return to 2018 to save his wife Laura (Zoe Saldaña), an ace pilot who went missing during a mission for their boss, Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener)—who, it just so happens, is the former partner of their dad Louis, whose research directly led to the creation of time travel. As Adam’s ship magically self-repairs, he incessantly banters with young Adam, helping him deal with his bully problem and teaching him to be kinder to his mourning mom, who Adam himself comforts with reassuring platitudes at a local bar. He also confirms that being a geek is great, a sentiment embraced by The Adam Project, given how vigorously it nods to Amblin-era Spielberg, makes references to The Terminator and Back to the Future, and has Adam fight armored adversaries with a laser staff that young Adam rightfully identifies as a lightsaber.
Reynolds also wielded that iconic weapon in Levy’s Free Guy, thereby underscoring this collaboration’s meager level of inspiration. It’s not the final time The Adam Project “borrows” from Star Wars; a chase through a forest is straight out of Return of the Jedi, and a climactic clash boasts strong echoes of The Phantom Menace. George Lucas, alas, isn’t the only spiritual godfather of this lazily dreary hodgepodge, what with it also delivering a dose of Field of Dreams schmaltz, a shout-out to Mortal Kombat, and shades of The Last Starfighter. In total, the entire thing feels like a great big act of pandering, as if the film had only been conceived to regurgitate things that its target demographic adores. If you grew up during—or have a fondness for—mainstream ‘80s cinema, you’ve already experienced all of this in its original, superior incarnations.
Worse is that The Adam Project marries a lack of innovation to a lust for stating every one of its ideas in the clunkiest and corniest manner possible. “Boys always come back for their mamas,” Adam tells Ellie, followed by, “He doesn’t hate you. He loves you. More than he knows.” To his careerist father, he states, “You were always more interested in the universe than your own son.” Young Adam wisely psychoanalyzes his adult self, explaining, “It’s easier to be angry than it is to be sad.” Chastising her husband about his parenting, Ellie scolds Louis, “He doesn’t need perfect. He just needs you.” On and on the gooey dialogue goes, snuffing out any flicker of subtlety with gale force wind-sized gusts of exposition. Even as a kid-centric effort, The Adam Project does little more than talk (down) to viewers, which grows increasingly wearisome as it navigates a well-traveled save-the-world path.
Every other locale in The Adam Project is either an obvious set or a more obvious byproduct of CGI, and that situation is compounded by Levy’s flat lighting and bland visual compositions. Despite striving to evoke the spirit of E.T. and its brethren, Levy’s mimicry is far more in line with that of Stranger Things (on which he’s an executive producer). The chintzy TV commercial-grade look of these proceedings is even more depressing than the leadenness of Reynolds’ quips, which come a mile and minute—from both the star and his adolescent doppelgänger Scobell—and yet by and large fail to land with any notable impact. Reynolds’ sarcastic schtick is always only as good as the material at hand, and in this instance, the script strands him with second-rate punchlines aimed mostly at his younger self, with whom he shares a functional chemistry that typifies the energy of this endeavor as a whole.
In what amount to going-through-the-motions roles, a collection of superhero-cinema vets (Ruffalo, Garner, Saldaña) add star wattage and little else, hamstrung as they are by a derivative story that smooths out any and all complications, be it regarding time-travel paradoxes or characters’ emotional turmoil. By the time Catherine Keener shares the screen with a clumsily de-aged version of herself, the action’s mechanical artificiality has long since overwhelmed everything, rendering the film merely the latest groan-worthy stab at creating the perfect Netflix monster.
