Sooo when I came across this movie I honestly expected a familiar play... like Reynolds walks into a dangerous situation, starts making jokes, insults somebody, gets into a fight, makes another joke and then somehow saves the day... while The Adam Project definitely has some of that Ryan Reynolds energy, I was actually surprised and impressed by how emotional this movie became.
The story follows Adam Reed, played by Ryan Reynolds who is a fighter pilot from the future.... After his aircraft gets damaged, he somehow ends up travelling back to 2022 and then he meets himself. Not an older version of himself... His younger self and honestly, this is where the movie becomes really fun because the younger Adam is basically a smaller, angrier version of the older Adam... They argue, insult each other and constantly get on each other's nerves.. At first, it almost feels like watching Ryan Reynolds argue with himself and somehow, it works...
The younger Adam is having a pretty rough time at school, he's dealing with bullies and he's still struggling with the death of his father... Meanwhile, the older Adam is carrying his own pain and regrets..
So while the movie is technically about time travel and saving the future, it slowly becomes more about Adam trying to understand his own past and I really liked that.
The movie could have easily been just another big science-fiction action movie, but underneath all the lasers, spaceships and time-travel stuff, there's actually a story about grief...
Adam misses his dad... His mother is trying to move forward with her life and Adam doesn't really know how to deal with any of it...
That part actually hit me more than I expected because sometimes when you're watching these big movies, you don't expect something simple like a conversation between a son and his mother to affect you more than an action scene but that's what happened here.
Jennifer Garner plays Adam's mother, Ellie, and I thought she did a really good job... She's not just there as "the mom." You can feel that she's trying to hold everything together after losing her husband while also dealing with a son who is clearly struggling and then there's Mark Ruffalo as Louis Reed, Adam's father... I really liked his character...
Even though he's not around for the entire story, his relationship with Adam is basically the emotional heart of the movie... The way the movie handles the idea of losing someone you love was probably my favorite part. There are things you wish you could change... Things you wish you could go back and fix... Things you wish you could say to someone before it's too late and that's where the time-travel concept actually becomes useful instead of just being there because the movie needs some science-fiction action...
Adam literally gets the opportunity to go back and see his father again and knowing that he's going to lose him again makes those moments feel different.
The action is pretty good too.. There are futuristic aircraft, laser weapons, explosions, people fighting with glowing sticks... basically all the things you'd expect from a big Netflix sci-fi movie.
The movie moves quickly enough that you don't really have time to sit there judging the effects... The relationship between the two Adams is definitely the funniest part...
Ryan Reynolds does what Ryan Reynolds does, but Walker Scobell actually keeps up with him surprisingly well and I think that's important because if the younger Adam wasn't convincing, the whole movie would probably fall apart but Walker plays him with this combination of anger, sarcasm and vulnerability that makes you understand why the older Adam turned out the way he did.
He's basically looking at his younger self and realizing, "Oh... so this is where all my problems started."..
Another thing I liked is that the movie isnt too serious... There are some genuinely funny moments and the humor keeps the movie from becoming too depressing...
You can go from watching a character talking about losing his father to Ryan Reynolds making some ridiculous joke a few minutes later... Normally, that can sometimes ruin the emotional moment in movies but here, I think it mostly works because that's just how Ryan Reynolds' character is..
He's basically using humor as a way of dealing with everything and honestly, a lot of people do that in real life... We joke about things that actually hurt us... We laugh when we don't know what else to say... That's probably why the character worked for me...
Rating: 85/100