The Adam Project

One of the most pleasant surprises of the year. I admit that I’ve been quite saturated with Ryan Reynolds lately, which is why I kept postponing The Adam Project, but after watching it, I’m mildly enthusiastic. The film features a nearly Spielbergian drama about time travel and meeting your younger self. It offers a precise visual style, including a few successful action sequences. Reynolds doesn’t overact in the lead role; instead, he delivers a focused performance. The young kid is great and might have paved the way for a bright future. But what really captivated me was the story. In the second half, Mark Ruffalo joins the cast, and it honestly boosts the entire plot (in a positive way). I’m not afraid to admit that it even brought me to tears. Some scenes genuinely hit hard, leaving no dry eyes (the baseball throwing between the father and two versions of his son totally broke me). Excellent sci-fi. For me, it’s 8/10. (09/20/2022)

The Adam Project mixes elements of a family comedy with a sci-fi adventure story, and while they certainly tried to come up with something fresh, it's ultimately a bland film about time travel and family values. The Ryan Reynolds-Walker Scobell duo is fine, but by wanting to make a film "for the whole family", they had to rein in the (inappropriate) humor (though a "farting" gunshot wound is something you don’t see anywhere). Catherine Keener was too likeable for me for a baddie, and her younger self had a CGI aftertaste like Henry Cavill's chin in Justice League. The Adam Project doesn't surprise or amaze, but it doesn't offend or bore either. (01/15/2023)

A B-movie with a huge B. Adam mixes and recycles long since used ideas in an entertaining cocktail of great one-liners, references and nods. Reynolds is exactly the same once again, even though his younger me is even better. This likeable guy is the heart of the entire story. Levy remains an unimpressive director who is lucky in choosing screenplays. Nostalgia, popular science, family, dough = a recipe for success. SPOILER: Hulk is Deadpool’s dad! (03/12/2022)

I'd rather see this in the cinema than, say, Uncharted. A cool family film from the family of those live-action Disney movies that used to be shown on weekend mornings, where the logic of the plot doesn't matter that much, but rather it's all about the situations the main characters get into. The juxtaposition of younger and older selves who have a lot to say to each other and one can accuse the other of forgetting something or of having yet to figure something out worked very well for me, and although Ryan Reynolds is mostly playing Ryan Reynolds again, he was funny, and thankfully he wasn't alone on this one. (03/13/2022)

After Free Guy, like a lot of other people, I thought Shawn Levy had gone into his own and had finally grown from a routinist into a director who could be genuinely interesting. After Project Adam, I don't think so. Indeed, this Netflix family-action sci-fi film that pretends to want to follow in the footsteps of Back to the Future, E.T., and those adventure films that Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis once made, managed to impress in the trailers, but it's a lot weaker in feature form. It's as if Levy was given a ten-page manual on “how to make old-school family sci-fi flick in the twenty-first century quickly and easily”, just copied it, and then he ditched his own invention. With Project Adam, you can tick off all the Spielberg and Zemeckis stuff, either in the themes the film addresses or in direct references. Levy manages to offer solid action, Ryan Reynolds playing Ryan Reynolds (you decide for yourself whether to take that as a positive), and the film works quite well in individual. But unfortunately, those individual scenes don't really build on each other and the emotional moments alternate with the action or funny situations without any substance, and then it's all over. And it doesn't leave a strong impression, just the feeling that Levy is a solid executor, but without a really good script he can't really scratch above the average. (03/13/2022)