"The Adam Project" derivative but an affectionate, eager-to-please diversion

The Adam Project (2022)

“The Adam Project” is a movie that's so eager to please that you kind of, sort of succumb, kicking and screaming. It seeks to be an original yet nostalgic and crowd-pleasing throwback, but too often just settles for echoing many other, mostly better genre movies. This isn’t to say that it isn’t generally enjoyable, but only as a slick, derivative, unapologetically sentimental amalgamation of time travel, younger and older selves, parent and child relationships, and a ruthless supervillain who just wants some doodad. Even if “The Adam Project” is a pre-packaged pastiche of 2000’s “Frequency” with an Amblin-esque thumbprint, director Shawn Levy (2021's "Free Guy") and writers Jonathan Tropper and T.S. Nowlin & Jennifer Flackett & Mark Levin clearly have a lot of affection for their humor-laced, family-centered sci-fi adventure brethren.

Barely a year after losing his father, asthmatic, small-statured but big-mouthed 12-year-old Adam Reed (Walker Scobell) has been getting suspended at school for fighting, even though he’s always the one emerging fully scathed. His mother, Ellie (Jennifer Garner), is at her wits’ end, left to grieve on her own. One night at home alone, Adam and his dog find something in his dad’s garage, and it’s not E.T. but the older version of himself, now a resistance pilot (Ryan Reynolds) from 2050 who’s wounded from a gunshot. Having jumped into the wormhole, Old Adam had stolen a jet on a rescue mission to save his wife Laura (Zoe Saldaña) in 2018, and now he needs to lay low from villainous commander Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener), Adam’s father’s former business partner. Both Adams will need to get along and find their father, physics professor Louis (Mark Ruffalo), in the past. If they can stop time travel since Louis practically invented it, the future is saved and everyone is happy, except for Sorian.

In spite of his kid-actor debut precociousness, 13-year-old newcomer Walker Scobell is a likably funny wiseass as Young Adam, closely modeling his deadpan delivery and unctuous facial expressions after Ryan Reynolds. As Big Adam, Ryan Reynolds is playing Ryan Reynolds again, but cavalier sarcasm is such a sweet spot for him that it’s hard to complain when it doesn’t feel tiresome here. When it's just the two of them, Scobell and Reynolds have infectiously fun chemistry as each other’s counterparts, whether Young Adam is getting awestruck over his future self’s gym bod or Old Adam coming across his younger self’s bullies. 

The actors assembled here are such pros that they manage to pull some genuine feeling out of material that otherwise relies on big, maudlin emotional beats. Jennifer Garner, eternally playing America's Mom, gets to share one heartfelt, nicely played exchange with Reynolds, where Ellie is gifted unexpectedly lovely words of encouragement and empathy from a stranger at a bar, the future version of her son unbeknownst to her. Garner and Mark Ruffalo also have a sweet “13 Going on 30” reunion, while Reynolds and Zoe Saldaña try their hardest to sell their Love Story That Matters. Having just played a much more complicated and offbeat villain in the awesomely oddball Netflix series “Brand New Cherry Flavor,” Catherine Keener is cool and calm but overqualified, as Sorian mostly amounts to a bland, shouty, out-for-herself baddie in need of a thingamajig (yay, it’s a drive). It is a cool idea to see a younger Keener standing next to Catherine Keener now, but the seams really show with distractingly rough de-aging effects that reside in the uncanny valley. 

Where “The Adam Project” goes, with few special surprises but satisfying payoffs nonetheless, is ultimately hard to resist as charming-enough pop entertainment. Every now and then there is an exciting visual set-piece (Sorian’s fight-ready time soldiers getting blown into digital Skittles with a "lightsaber"), a one-liner that lands, or a touching moment between loved ones. Even the emergence of Old Adam’s invisible plane hovering in the woodsy Pacific Northwest at night evokes that sense of wonder. Any movie that goes out with Pete Townshend’s “Let My Love Open the Door” can’t be that bad, either. Wearing its heart (and influences) on its Marty McFly vest, "The Adam Project" is a breezy diversion that goes down easy in the moment before being just as easy to forget. 

Grade: B -

Netflix is releasing “The Adam Project” (106 min.) globally on Netflix on March 11, 2022.