Movie Review: 'The Adam Project' is a Terrific Time Travel Adventure

The Adam Project stars Ryan Reynolds in the role of Adam Reed. Adam is a pilot in some unspecified dystopian future where time travel has not only been discovered, it’s been used for nefarious purposes. When Adam decides to fight back and steal a time traveling spaceship, he ends up getting shot before jumping back in time to the year 2022. There, Adam plants his ship in the trees behind his childhood home and meets his 12 year old self, played by Walker Scobell.

Needing a place to recover while he repairs his ship, Adam is forced to work with his younger self whose DNA is needed to repair the ship. It turns out that Adam’s late father, played by Mark Ruffalo invented time travel before his untimely death in 2018 under mysterious circumstances. Dad named the entire time travel project after Adam and he’s become integral to the program run by Sorian (Catherine Keener), Dad’s former partner who is a little bit greedy and a whole lot evil.

The Adam Project was directed by Shawn Levy, not one of my favorite directors. Levy has made some truly terrible, (The Pink Panther) borderline unwatchable (Cheaper by the Dozen) movies in his career but this is not one of those. In fact, The Adam Project is unquestionably the best movie that Levy has made as a director. That could be due to the clever premise crossed with a killer cast that includes not just Reynolds, Ruffalo and Keener, but also Jennifer Garner as Adam’s Mom and Zoe Saldana in a role I don’t want to spoil here. It’s not much of a secret but it provides much of the narrative momentum for the story.

The Adam Project is a bounce back for Ryan Reynolds, for me. I’ve deeply disliked every movie Reynolds has made since the last time he suited up as Deadpool back in 2018. Recently, aside from the bad in a different way, Free Guy, Reynolds’ quippy schtick has grown very stale. That’s down to Reynolds not mixing things up and part because other actors have been trying to pull off Reynolds’ act to diminishing returns. (Looking at you Chris Pratt). Red Notice was the absolute nadir with Reynolds turning in an obnoxious performance opposite Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot.

So why is the act a little fresher in The Adam Project? It comes down to the premise, it's really clever. The premise and the role place Reynolds in a kind of can't miss role. Reynolds is slightly more serious than usual and the background and motivation of his character has soul and sadness to it that grounds the performance. He’s still quick witted and quippy but it comes from a different perspective in The Adam Project. It also helps that he’s paired with the wonderful young actor Walker Scobell who sparks terrifically with Reynolds. Their squabbling is charming in that you can sense Reynolds really had fun playing off of the kid.

The other aspect of The Adam Project that worked for me was seeing Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner on screen together as a couple. Forgive my fanboy-ness for a moment, I am an unapologetic fan of 13 Going on 30 and seeing Garner and Ruffalo together in The Adam Project was a complete delight. The easy, charming, romantic chemistry between Ruffalo and Garner remains even 18 years after that beloved romantic comedy hit theaters. I know this has nothing to do with The Adam Project but I don’t care, seeing Ruffalo and Garner together on screen again made me very happy.

As a whole sci-fi adventure comedy, The Adam Project probably doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. It’s definitely convoluted in many ways and the story takes a lot of shortcuts but the action is fun and exciting and the characters are all uniformly good. Catherine Keener’s villain character is perhaps a little old school, harkening back to those 80’s movie villains of pure, cackling villainy, but I didn’t mind. The Adam Project has an overall retro vibe anyway so a throwback style of villain is kind of fitting.

In the end, regardless of the actual qualities of The Adam Project, I had a really good time. I liked the premise, I loved the characters, and the little moments, like the few minutes of Ruffalo and Garner together, had me in pure delight. I find that there is just enough fun in The Adam Project that what little might have bothered me in a critical manner don’t match up to the amount of fun I had watching The Adam Project.

The Adam Project debuts on Netflix on March 11th, 2022.