After working together on last year’s Truman Show-esque action-comedy Free Guy, director Shawn Levy and star Ryan Reynolds are back in the saddle, this time on an original sci-fi romp with a timey-wimey twist. Cinematic nostalgia is still the order of the day as we collectively continue to seek reminders of better times, and Levy’s movie — based on a T.S. Nowlin spec script from 2012 — duly obliges, offering a throwback slice of escapism with plenty of heart.
Adam Reed (Ryan Reynolds) is a time-travelling pilot on a mission to find his wife Laura (a typically strong Zoe Saldana), who went missing under mysterious circumstances. Pursued by the villainous Sorian (Catherine Keener) — a vacuous big bad who exists almost solely to send baddies to their lightsabering doom — Adam crash-lands in the present day, where he makes an unlikely friend in his younger self (Walker Scobell). Merciless Reynoldsian ribbing, several opened cans of whoop-ass and some earnest soul-searching ensue as the two Adams search for Laura, fend off Sorian, and find themselves travelling back in time to meet their late father (Mark Ruffalo, giving 13 Going On 30 fans the reunion with an excellent Jennifer Garner they’ve desired), who turns out to be the inventor of time travel.
Levy’s cinematic eye for otherwise innocuous details really leaves a lasting impression.
Working in the ’80s Amblin tradition (echoes of Back To The Future and E.T. are rarely far away), Levy uses the fantastical conceit of The Adam Project to offer a film that’s constantly searching for moments of emotional intimacy within the broader blockbuster framework. The genre’s bread-and-butter tropes are all present and correct here — gigantic spaceships, pew-pews, vrooshes and high-stakes showdowns — though their application mostly serves as a reminder of a dozen other films that made better use of them. What plays to the director’s strengths are the small, personal moments: an overdue hug, a whispered apology or a simple game of catch. Levy’s cinematic eye for otherwise innocuous details really leaves a lasting impression.
The real aces up Levy’s sleeve here are newcomer Walker Scobell and Ryan Reynolds. 13-year-old Scobell — a Deadpool megafan — uncannily nails Reynolds’ cadence and sardonic wit as a young Adam, commanding the lion’s share of the film’s big laughs. Opposite him, Reynolds — galvanised by a script that resonated with his own emotional response to losing his father in 2020 — digs deep to portray a man whose biting humour is used to hide a storm of emotions within. It’s arguably his best performance since 2010’s Buried (one scene with Garner, who plays Adam’s mum, is a career best). When the film gives the two Adams space to work through their grief together, allowing Scobell and Reynolds to really explore the way loss shapes and reshapes us over the course of our lives, it’s beautiful.
