- There is a lack of realism in the Adam Project. From the outside, it looks like something you’d see on a movie poster in a not-so-inventive Hollywood satire—and from the inside, too. It seems false both from the outside and from the inside. A mishmash of concepts plucked from previous well-known films; it simply sits there. As though you’re sitting through a screenplay that hasn’t been written yet.
- And the most bizarre part is that The Adam Project seems to be aware of this. When dealing with Reynolds, the greatest issue has always been dealing with his underlying insincerity. Predictability is a hallmark of his demeanour. His finest work comes when he embraces this deliberate quality, which can make for some fascinating performances. The con artist/gambler in Mississippi Grind and the condescending frat bro in Van Wilder were two of his best roles. Despite his flaws, Free Guy from last year worked well as an NPC who gains consciousness; his robotic demeanour was appropriate for someone who lives only inside the confines of a computer game.
- Filmmaker Shawn Levy also directed The Adam Project, and both films have an almost insane, overindulgent sense of appropriation and parodie. Reynolds portrays Adam Reed, a character we initially meet in the year 2050 when he is nursing a wound in his stomach, before he jumps forward to the year 2022. In the woods near where he used to live as a youngster with his widowed mother, he comes to a stop (Jennifer Garner). Adam (Walker Scobell), a 12-year-old asthmatic and skinny wise-ass, is a persistent target of bullies. It is just a matter of time until Adam and the young kid understand that this cynical soldier is his future self, and they set out together to complete Adam’s secret quest to correct the past.
- Nothing about it is particularly enigmatic. Louis (Mark Ruffalo), Adam’s late scientist father, worked with rich entrepreneur Maya Sorian to develop the future’s time-travel technology in 2018, as we discover (Catherine Keener). By the year 2050, Sorian has managed to transform the Earth into a literal hellhole via the usage of this technology. In the future, “The Terminator” would be a “great day,” according to Adam, the protagonist of the film. We don’t really see it.) So now the two Adams must journey back in time to stop their father from making time travel a reality. That’s what I’m hearing. After a certain point, my brain shut down.
- But at least Ruffalo, who adds emotional honesty and participation to the picture that Reynolds does not, is able to show up later in the film, which is a relief. In a future version of this film that was put together with any kind of care, this may be a fascinating contrast between the two performers. Unfortunately, Keener does not have the same success as Ruffalo. She’s been blasted to a coma. As a matter of fact, she’s a complete waste of time. With the use of current motion picture visual effects technology, Keener is transformed into a terrible actor during a few later sequences in which we see her in an uncomfortably de-aged form.
- You’ve undoubtedly got a lot of questions about the movie by now. I can tell you that none of these questions are answered by The Adam Project. Fans of sci-fi movies who are curious as to how this film depicts time travel will be disappointed, but it won’t please those of us who believe that movies already spend too much time attempting to make their bogus science work. High Life or Solaris aren’t precisely what you’ll find here. Formalism won’t be Shawn Levy’s answer to the nerd-obsession-obsessed in his fight against them.
- Levy, on the other hand, only wants to amuse, which is a worthy objective. He has sped up the film so fast that he believes we won’t be able to stop and think about how it all works. Not only does science fiction vanish, but so does everything else that isn’t cool. Emotional reasoning is also ignored. Upon first meeting, the elder Adam declares that the younger Adam is a pain in the a$$. Despite this, Adam as a child seems to be a very normal youngster compared to Adam as a grown-up. Is this a deliberate choice? We don’t know for sure. What does it matter? The film has a lot of potential, but none of it is realised. It simply keeps moving on to the next disconnected storey element over and over again. Derivativeness isn’t necessarily an issue in and of itself. If you’re cynical about the business world, that’s not always a bad thing. Crazed opportunism is what comes out when everything is managed so poorly.
