MOVIE REVIEW: "The Adam Project" is Cooked Up by An Algorithm of Mediocrity
5/12 ForReel Score | 2/5 Stars
Where to start? Why not the middle? That seems to be where Shawn Levy is content beginning his newest outing with Ryan Reynolds: The Adam Project. Following the morally bankrupt, but financially successful Free Guy, Levy and Reynolds have reunited for yet another sci-fi superhero-ish movie. This time, they step away from the videogame metaverse and onto a C-grade Amblin movie set where good acting matters little and plot matters less.
The Adam Project begins with Adam (Ryan Reynolds) stealing a spaceship in 2050 and time traveling back to 2022, only to crash land in his own childhood backyard. He’s greeted by the nerdy twelve-year-old version of himself, played by Walker Scobell. Together, the pair of Adams must go back even further in time, to 2018, to stop their father from inventing time travel, so they can save Future Adam’s wife and also, possibly, the world?
If that plot summary sounds half-baked, that’s because it is. Levy, wielding a great deal of Netflix’s money, knows that viewers don’t tune into Ryan Reynolds’ movies for the plot - they tune in for the humor. So, Levy, alongside four other writers, cobbled together a couple storylines about lost wives, dead fathers, and an evil corporation that prefers power over peace, and churned out The Adam Project - a mid-budget vehicle to plaster Ryan Reynolds face across Netflix and get millions of clicks.
It seems, though, that they’ve been successful. The Adam Project has spent time in its opening week trending at #1 on Netflix’s ambiguous and often scrutinized “Most Popular” list. Say what you will about Ryan Reynolds brand of humor, it certainly sells. But that seems to be all that The Adam Project has going for it.
For all of its CGI set pieces and A-list co-stars (Catherine Keener, Jennifer Garner, Zoe Saldana, and Mark Ruffalo round out the cast), there’s next to nothing going on beneath the surface of The Adam Project. Despite his long resume of playing the same character, from the classic Deadpool to the Netflix enigma, Red Notice, Ryan Reynolds’ punchlines fall particularly flat here. They’re also compounded by the redundant nature of Scobell’s performance, which is an unabashed attempt to replicate Reynolds’ style of humor as a twelve-year-old. Together, they may have good sibling synergy (or whatever relationship one has with the pre-teen version of themself) but their playing to the audience is tiresome and quickly unfunny.
While Reynolds (and by extension, Scobell) consistently appear to be in on the joke, the rest of the cast actually has to make a solemn effort to appear convincing in this film. Ruffalo and Saldana come in ostensibly playing their Marvel counterparts, while Jennifer Garner gives a genuinely good performance as Adam’s mother. There’s another reunification here of Garner and Ruffalo from 2004’s 13 Going On 30, that might be the sweetest part of the film. Two fantastic actors, all grown up, just chewing the scenery as they pretend to parent in a one-take scene; what more can you ask for? If that’s the high point, then the real low point in this trough of a film is the handling of Catherine Keener’s character, Maya Sorian.
Not only are audiences faced with Sorian, your stereotypical sci-fi villain, an evil CEO who steals her employee’s work to capitalize off the destruction of the world, they’re faced with two of her. Thanks to the convoluted time traveling aspect of the film, Future Sorian is in cahoots with 2018 Sorian - a deepfaked Catherine Keener that looks like it was pulled straight from an animator’s nightmares. Keener is forced to act in a box, while her CGI counterpart, a monstrosity that looks nothing like Keener did at 30, slinks around beside her. Her scenes, often used to build some sort of emotional stakes (could she possibly get away with it?), aren’t just bad, they’re downright laughable.
This isn’t to say that there are no redeeming qualities to The Adam Project. As I pointed out, Ruffalo and Garner are fantastic, as is Zoe Saldana in her very limited screen time. The action, while heavily CGI-ed, is nonetheless shot particularly well. On the pantheon of Ryan Reynolds’ Netflix films, The Adam Project isn’t quite 6 Underground, but it’s certainly no Red Notice.
Despite what The Adam Project has going for it though, the success of this film is almost entirely unwarranted. It’s neither the best original content that Netflix has to offer, nor bad enough to be dismissed out of hand. The Adam Project exists in a liminal state of mediocrity, designed to successfully game an algorithm and fail in almost every other way.
Acting/Casting - 1 | Visual Effects and Editing - 1 | Story and Message - 1 | Entertainment value - 1 | Music Score and Soundtrack - 1 | Reviewer’s Preference - 0 | What does this mean?
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