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The Adam Project review – Ryan Reynolds quips through thin Netflix sci-fi
The time travel adventure, from Free Guy director Shawn Levy, sees the actor recycling his witty, and often wearying, nice guy schtick
The default tone of The Adam Project, Free Guy director Shawn Levy’s second sci-fi lite offering with Ryan Reynolds in as many years, is apiece with any other Reynolds film: quippy one-liners leavening a stressful situation. “Time travel exists, you just don’t know it yet,” we’re told in the opening shot, as an adult Adam Reed, another Reynolds-standard – a generically handsome, witty nice guy – steals a plane in the year 2050. Spitting comebacks even as he’s under fire in space – the graphics here (invisible ships!) seem decent for Netflix but still best suited for a small screen – Adam opens up a wormhole and crash-lands somewhere outside of Seattle in 2022.
Adult Adam, wounded and four years off from his target (the year 2018, to be later explained), blows up the life of his 12-year-old self (Walker Scobell), an asthmatic, caustic small fry reeling from the recent loss of his scientist father Louis (Mark Ruffalo). Scobell, with his reedy voice, soft brown eyes and flop of blonde hair, is endearing despite having to muddle through lines that feel generated from a Reynolds bot – chirpy, deeply annoying comebacks to his wearied mother Ellie (an underused Jennifer Garner) or a pair of archetypical school bullies.
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