movie review the adam project

The Adam Project

Science fiction author David Brin says there is just one reason for time travel: “Make it didn’t happen.” The idea of correcting, no, preventing one mistake is an irresistible fantasy. And whether it’s about protecting the future mother of the only hero who can lead a rebellion against Skynet or making sure your own parents fall in love so that you and your siblings will be born, the movies have given us some of our favorite stories of rescue operations by traveling through time. “The Adam Project” is a popcorn pleasure from the director and the star of last year’s “ Free Guy .”

It begins with a banger, indeed one of the banger-iest songs of all time, Spencer Davis Group’s 1966 “Gimme Some Lovin’.” It is not there to tell us where we are in time or anything about rocket ship pilot Adam Reed ( Ryan Reynolds ). No matter, it’s just there to bring a jolt of energy as we join the story mid-chase. We know Reynolds can play other characters, but here he is what he does most and best, a snarky action hero. “What are you doing, Captain?” the instantly recognizable voice of Catherine Keener asks over speaker. “I think it’s pretty obvious I’m stealing this jet.” We are told that it is 2050 and time travel exists but we don’t know it yet. And we can see that Adam is in trouble. Both he and the ship have been hit. “I’m sorry to interrupt what I’m sure is going to be a really scary threat,” he says as he jams her tracking system and evades capture by escaping through a wormhole that takes him back to 2022.

Meanwhile, in the present, Adam Reed, age 12 ( Walker Scobell ), is getting suspended for the third time for fighting with a bully. He and his mother ( Jennifer Garner as Ellie) are still mourning for Adam’s father, who was killed in a car accident more than a year before, and he is angry about that, about being small for his age, about pretty much everything and so he is very big with the snarky comebacks, even when he knows it means a beating.

Big Adam arrives at Young Adam’s house (his old house), injured, with a damaged ship. Reynolds and Scobell are a terrific match, with the same rhythms, both in observation and in snark. They also have the same scar under their chins and the same watch, their dad’s watch. It does not take long for Young Adam to figure out he is talking to his future self. It takes a little longer for Big Adam to realize that his younger self deserves some compassion. While he tells Young Adam that it is all of the trauma he experiences that will give him the strength and cynicism he relies on as an adult, he learns that maybe a little less trauma will be beneficial to them both.

It also does not take long for the bad guys to arrive, along with two key figures I will not spoil. “The Adam Project” deftly balances the action with the comedy inherent in conflict between the two Adams. Both versions of Adam are exceptionally good at getting on the nerves of everyone around them, and it’s fun to see how they are at the same time irritated by and appreciative of each other’s smart-aleck comebacks. Big Adam does not want to be reminded about how unhappy and angry he was as a 12-year-old. Young Adam is as thrilled at the prospect of growing up to look like Ryan Reynolds as he is to learn that there is such a thing as time travel and ride in a real space ship. He does not understand how unhappy and angry his future self is, but we do.

The characters make references to “The Terminator” and “ Back to the Future ” but the film also draws from the underrated “ Frequency ” and from stories going back to the myth of Orpheus. And fans of “13 Going on 30” will appreciate seeing Garner and Mark Ruffalo as a devoted couple. (Ruffalo unfortunately does not have any scenes with co-star Zoe Saldaña, who played his wife in the indie gem “ Infinitely Polar Bear .”)

The film more than delivers on the promise of its premise with better-than-expected production design from Claude Paré for the futuristic gizmos and special effects by Scanline VFX for the way they are deployed. The action and fight scenes are very well staged, especially one with a tender reunion in the midst of the mayhem. Big Adam’s warming to his younger version gives the story some heart in the midst of the mayhem as well. There is genuine tenderness in his realization that anger does not prevent sadness and that second chances are possible. The action and fantasy are fun, but this is what families will want to talk about after they watch it together.

On Netflix tomorrow.

Nell Minow is the Contributing Editor at RogerEbert.com.

Zoe Saldana as
Walker Scobell as Young Adam
Ryan Reynolds as Big Adam
Mark Ruffalo as Louis Reed
Jennifer Garner as Ellie
Catherine Keener as Sorien
Dean Zimmerman
Jennifer Flackett
Jonathan Tropper
T.S. Nowlin
Rob Simonsen

Cinematographer

Tobias A. Schliessler

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‘The Adam Project’ Review: Back Talk to the Future

Ryan Reynolds plays a time traveling wise cracker in Shawn Levy’s science fiction adventure.

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By Natalia Winkelman

Early in “The Adam Project,” a pipsqueak asthmatic named Adam (Walker Scobell) and his golden retriever gallivant through the woods among shimmering falling debris. The cause of the wreckage, Adam learns, is a time jet that was crash landed by his older self (Ryan Reynolds) traveling from the future. This is pure ’80s sci-fi pastiche for the ages. Add a few flying saucer chases, cook up a quickie solution to the grandfather paradox and this movie might have fallen at the intersection of “E.T.” and “Back to the Future.”

Instead, “The Adam Project,” directed by Shawn Levy, might as well be called “The Ryan Reynolds Project.” Last summer, Levy and Reynolds teamed up under a different Hollywood juggernaut to deliver the clamorous video game flick “Free Guy.” This new movie ( on Netflix ) is a comparable package — noisy and formulaic, but still occasionally enjoyable. Reynolds recycles his trademark twerpy charisma, using quips to punctuate battle scenes that are spiced up with special effects. Mileage for the actor’s wise guy persona will vary — I’ve personally had my fill for several lifetimes, with or without time travel — and it’s hard here to separate the movie from the leading man.

This is because Reynolds imbues Adam with such excitable, exhibitionistic energy he might as well be waving jazz hands. Levy and the screenwriters, Jonathan Tropper, T.S. Nowlin, Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, have crafted in “The Adam Project” a vehicle that enables Reynolds to multiply his shtick by two. By allying Adam with himself, not only can Reynolds poke fun at his adversaries — “your outfits are incredible,” he gushes at one point to a squad of henchman — he can actually mock his own insufferableness. “You have a very punchable face,” he tells Adam the preteen early in their peregrinations. Scobell, for his part, mirrors Reynolds’s mien with precision, making the duo feel less like Marty McFly and Doc Brown than twin sidekicks who stumbled into the spotlight.

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The Adam Project Reviews

Shawn Levy’s straight-to-Netflix sci-fi feature is a heartfelt journey for the whole family.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 22, 2024

“The Adam Project” latches onto viewers and takes them on an exhilarating joyride.

Full Review | Oct 31, 2023

The Adam Project is not a perfect film, but it’s exactly the kind of film we need right now: a highly enjoyable adventure with the right dose of nostalgia and plenty of heart.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 1, 2023

What an INCREDIBLE, thrilling Adventure that took me back to early 80’s Sci-fi features that contains a charm that is irresistible. + The heart of it all will leave you an emotional wreck.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

The Adam Project will undoubtedly be a big hit for Shawn Levy, Ryan Reynolds, and Netflix. The film goes beyond its sci-fi time travel tropes and delivers some wonderful character-rich performances.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 4, 2023

The Adam Project was very entertaining ride for the whole family. Has great character roles from Ryan Reynolds, Mark Ruffulo and new comer Walker Scobell they all have great chemistry that even in times of this being very silly it never goes off the rails

Full Review | Original Score: 8.5/10 | Dec 26, 2022

Free Guy director Shawn Levy reteams with star Ryan Reynolds for a half-hearted attempt to recapture the heyday of Amblin Entertainment, which results in one of the laziest sci-fi blockbusters in quite some time.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Dec 10, 2022

That’s probably all the audience should expect from a picture like this, one released direct-to-streaming for delivery of perfunctory content meant to bring eyes to the service, but not providing the level of quality one can often find at the cineplex.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 22, 2022

A glossy amalgamation of much better action-adventure fare.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 6, 2022

Above all else, it may be the only time you'll get to see a bullet wound be the means by which to make a fart joke in a movie...so at least it's got that going for it?

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 23, 2022

Never have I heard such hyperactive dialogue so painfully lacking in wit that I often struggled to even follow the basic plot.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Jul 26, 2022

It's pleasures are frontloaded so by the time it reaches its generically explosive plot hole riddled conclusion, interest has long since waned.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jun 14, 2022

A science fiction adventure with lots of humor. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | May 16, 2022

Well put together and functional, it feels as though we are in unexplored territory. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 13, 2022

The goal here is to make you feel good about the magic that movies can grab a hold of, even if only temporarily--and how simple father-son pathos can cue the waterworks when performed well.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | May 10, 2022

At most, the screen equivalent of a really good Big Mac, and as much as you might like McDonalds, theres a reason those restaurants dont get Michelin stars.

Full Review | Apr 25, 2022

When Levy tries to get serious and introspective, as little Adam forces Big Adam to confront the psychological pain of losing his father, the movie discovers a new kind of cinematic time travel by making the film slow to a crawl.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 17, 2022

I really enjoyed it.

Full Review | Apr 12, 2022

Whats really disappointing is that there was obviously a better movie somewhere in there, but dumb action sequences outmuscle the more successful parts of the story.

Full Review | Apr 5, 2022

Project isn’t brimming with originality, but it knows how to fit familiar parts together in an entertaining way.

Full Review | Apr 1, 2022

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Ryan reynolds in netflix’s ‘the adam project’: film review.

The star reteams with ‘Free Guy’ director Shawn Levy, playing a time traveler who returns to fix the world while reconnecting with his preteen self and late father.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Ryan Reynolds as Big Adam and Walker Scobell as Young Adam in The Adam Project.

In Shawn Levy ’s Free Guy , Ryan Reynolds starred as a non-player videogame character who breaks free of his programming to score himself a life and make a difference to a joyless world. Reuniting with the director on The Adam Project , another high-concept, highly derivative clutch of ideas from mostly better movies, Reynolds again tries to escape his programming by juggling his usual glib shtick with off-brand sincerity. That’s as hard to buy as the film’s awkward mashup of time-travel mayhem with sudsy melodrama about a fractured family’s path to healing.

As Netflix has shown repeatedly with the non-prestige end of its original film output — for instance, Red Notice , also featuring Reynolds on smirking autopilot — subscribers will eat up these star-driven concoctions no matter how recycled the plotting, making the movies more or less review-proof. That no doubt will prove to be the case again with this orphaned Paramount project, originally conceived as a Tom Cruise vehicle.

Full credits

Distributor: Netflix Production companies: Skydance, Maximum Effort, 21 Laps Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Garner, Walker Scobell, Catherine Keener, Zoe Saldaña, Alex Mallari Jr., Braxton Bjerken, Kasra Wong Director: Shawn Levy Screenwriters: Jonathan Tropper, T.S. Nowlin, Jennifer Flackett, Mark Levin Producers: David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Shawn Levy, Ryan Reynolds Executive producers: Mary McClagen, Josh McClagen, Dan Levine, Dan Cohen, George Dewey, Patrick Gooing, Jennifer Flackett, Mark Levin Director of photography: Tobias Schliessler Production designer: Claude Paré Costume designer: Jenny Eagan Music: Rob Simonsen Editors: Dean Zimmerman, Jonathan Corn Visual effects supervisor: Alessandro Ongaro Casting: Carmen Cuba

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‘The Adam Project’ Review: Ryan Reynolds Meets His 12-Year-Old Self in Shawn Levy’s Back-to-the-Future Action Confection

Their first collaboration after "Free Guy" is just a clever derivative trifle, but it shows why this star and director bring out the best in each other.

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Somewhere along the line, Ryan Reynolds became the most playful actor we have. That might sound like faint praise; some would call him silly or lightweight or even, in his aggro irreverance, a touch smarmy. But genuine fast-break insolence is a quality that’s missing from the lumbering cheek of most of our paint-by-numbers blockbusters. Reynolds has a knack for playing characters who are nonchalantly macho but with an amusing touch of cowardice, a contradiction he invests with a kind of innocence. He’s got a Nervous Nellie side that humanizes him, especially when it takes the form of a nerd’s verbal machine-gun fire. In his way, he’s a new screen type: the brainy goof in a pinup’s body.

Last summer, in the diabolically clever video-game head trip “Free Guy,” Reynolds finally got to be in a movie where the jittery digital-age fantasy elements skittered by every bit as quickly as his rapid-patter mind. The film was as jammed with media as Spielberg’s “Ready Player One,” but more relaxed about its own insanity, and that seemed to liberate Reynolds; it was the most accomplished work he’d done since “Deadpool.” The director Shawn Levy , who made the “Night at the Museum” films, also hit a new peak — of life-is-a-screen-and-we-just-live-in-it imaginative verve. “Free Guy” was the rare sleeper hit of the pandemic era, and Reynolds and Levy emerged from it as a kind of team. These two click rhythmically and chemically. They bring something out in each other.

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“ The Adam Project ” is their follow-up collaboration (both are executive producers of it), but it’s the Netflix version: a notch more anonymous, packed with fantasy and action as if it were being financed by the yard. At its best, though, you feel the exuberance of the Reynolds/Levy connection. The movie is a total trifle, but it’s often a diverting one — a wide-eyed sci-fi adventure with a screwball buoyancy.

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Reynolds, in a beard that makes him look like a smirky G.I. Joe, plays Adam Reed, a time-tripping renegade fighter pilot from the year 2050 who travels back to 2022, where he hooks up with his 12-year-old self: a small-for-his-age blond kid, played by the terrific Walker Scobell, who makes up for his stature — and for just about everything else — with the size of his brain and the sharpness of his mouth. He’s a sweet kid, yet so cuttingly observant that he can talk himself into getting punched by the school bully. Adam razzes his mother, Ellie ( Jennifer Garner ), and since they’re both still coping with the death of his father in a car accident a year-and-a-half before, she experiences the effrontery as an attack.

Adam, in cynical movie terms, needs a buddy who can be a father figure. And what buddy could be more ideal for him than his own self, 30 years later? Reynolds’ Adam, who drops into a woods lit with ’70s Spielbergian blue light and skulks around bleeding from a bullet wound, talks as much smack as 12-year-old Adam does. He’s just what the kid need and deserves. But there are, in addition, a whole lotta back-to-the-future logistical backflips going on. The premise of “The Adam Project” is that time travel exists, and that adult Adam has traveled back to the wrong year — he really wanted to land in 2018, so that he could stop Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener), his diabolical flight commander, from returning to that same year and causing all kinds of dastardly things to happen, starting with the death of Adam’s wife, Laura (Zoe Saldaña).

“The Adam Project” is the kind of time-travel movie that spins your head until it turns your head to mush. It’s the sort of film in which Catherine Keener, facing off against her de-aged self, warns of “the potential for catastrophic changes to the time stream,” and all you can think is: I liked time better before it became the time stream. These films bend over backwards to chase the tail of their own “logic” (if you go back in time and meet your younger self, how will that mess with the cosmos? And if, in fact, you change anything , how will that mess with the cosmos?), but the questions are inevitably more incisive than the answers. Because the simple eternal truth is that the more you think about time travel the way this movie asks you to, the less sense it makes.

But “The Adam Project” isn’t heavy-duty sci-fi. It’s a glossy bauble of a caper that uses time travel as a frame for action that’s staged as effusively as the demolition in a Road Runner cartoon. For a few scenes, the movie is “Top Gun” in the northwest. Then it’s a “Star Wars” ninja video game with adult Adam using a double-sided industrial light saber to fend off an army of metal droids that he reduces, with each saber slash, to orange-pink psychedelic powder. And once the characters return to the pivotal year of 2018, it becomes an absent-daddy bonding movie (more Spielberg!) with Adam’s late physicist father, played as a scruffy volatile professor by Mark Ruffalo , alive and well, which he needs to be because he’s the scientist who invented time travel. To save the future, Adam wants to eliminate that miraculous ability from the earth. But if he does, how will he meet Saldaña’s perky Laura?

The action scenes are choreographed to classic rock — “Gimme Some Lovin’,” “Foreplay/Long Time” by Boston, Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times, Bad Times.” The real time travel in this movie is back to the days when even action could be a boisterous form of feel-good entertainment. “The Adam Project” is the definition of trivial, and on the small screen it overstays its welcome by about 15 minutes, but it’s a brashly likable piece of antic high-powered fluff. Here’s my own leap into the future: As a team, Ryan Reynolds and Shawn Levy are going to make much better movies than this one, but you can feel the tastiness of their combo even in a kinetic marshmallow like “The Adam Project.” They’re not trying to fake fun.

Reviewed online, March 8, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 106 MIN.

Production: A Netflix release of a Skydance Entertainment, Maximum Effort, 21 Laps production. Producers: David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Shawn Levy, Ryan Reynolds. Executive producers: Mary McLaglen, Josh McLaglen, Dan Levine, Dan Cohen, George Dewey, Patrick Gooing, Jennifer Flackett, Mark Levin.
Crew: Director: Shawn Levy. Screenplay: Jonathan Tropper, T.S. Nowlin, Jennifer Flackett, Mark Levin. Camera: Tobias Schliessler. Editors: Dean Zimmerman, Jonathan Corn. Music: Rob Simonsen.
With: Ryan Reynolds, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Garner, Walker Scobell, Zoe Saldaña, Catherine Keener.

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The Adam Project review: Ryan Reynolds confronts his younger self in goofy time-loop adventure

A tale of two Adams, 30 years (and one tear in the space-time continuum) apart.

Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy 's first pairing, 2021's Free Guy, turned out to be one of the best small surprises of a very weird year: a glossy sci-fi blockbuster with a tender little Ted Lasso heart. Their second, The Adam Project (on Netflix Friday) arrives a scant seven months later — thank pandemic math for that — in a somewhat messier state, though the through-lines aren't hard to find. Like Free Guy , Adam hangs a lot on Reynolds' rat-a-tat banter and a winky awareness of all the multiplex tropes it's tweaking, even as it drills down on the all-you-need-is-love message at its squishy center.

Unlike Guy , it's is also purposefully positioned as a family film, with a Spielbergian sense of wonder to cut through all the pew-pew noise. That's a lot of disparate pieces to bring together tonally, and some bits just don't fit. The movie-logic premise of it all, at least, is hard to argue with: Time travel exists, and Reynold's circa-2050 Adam Reed is somehow able to revisit his 12-year-old self (Walker Scobell) without immediately ripping a space-vortex wormhole in everything Stephen Hawking ever taught us (though Hawking does happen to be the name of his childhood dog).

Adult Adam's crash landing in 2022 is actually a miscalculation; he was aiming for 2018, into which his wife Laura ( Zoe Saldaña ), a fellow pilot, recently disappeared and has been presumed dead following a standard flight exercise. But he's also been injured in his escape by Maya Sorian ( Catherine Keener ), the mendacious CEO who seems to control all this technology, and by extension most of the apocalyptic world he lives in. So he needs Young Adam's healthy DNA to help him get behind the wheel again, though he could clearly do with less of the rest of him.

He's not the only one: Though Scobell is an appealing young actor, the script (credited to four writers) insists on making him the kind of precocious, relentlessly verbal tween that only exists on screen. And the bullies at school, accordingly, heed the call of his "punchable" face literally; even his infinitely patient mother ( Jennifer Garner ) finds him impossible. (Reynolds' Adam puts it more succinctly: "Don't you just want to hold him underwater till the bubbles stop?") That exasperation wanes as the movie goes on — his brattiness, of course, is just the defense mechanism of a lonely, undersized kid still grieving the recent death of his dad ( Mark Ruffalo ) — and emotional breakthroughs get their due.

The narrative moves beyond its bickering Adams when Saldaña and an amiable, rumpled Ruffalo come in, though you wish Levy trusted his story enough not to fill every spare moment with expensive needle drops and the kind of high-key banter that inevitably ends up sounding like borrowed Deadpool in the mouths of most actors who aren't Reynolds. There are other distractions, like the face de-aging effects no current film can seem to go without, and an oddly cast Keener, whose impassive villainy worked better in Get Out than it does here. The life lessons, too, are unabashedly Hallmark-y (Hug your mother! Especially if she looks like Garner). For all its earnest sentiment and questionable science, though, Adam barrels along on movie stars and charm, from futures past and back again. Grade: B -

The Adam Project

After accidentally crash-landing in 2022, time-traveling fighter pilot Adam Reed teams up with his 12-year-old self for a mission to save the future. After accidentally crash-landing in 2022, time-traveling fighter pilot Adam Reed teams up with his 12-year-old self for a mission to save the future. After accidentally crash-landing in 2022, time-traveling fighter pilot Adam Reed teams up with his 12-year-old self for a mission to save the future.

Jonathan Tropper
T.S. Nowlin
Jennifer Flackett
Ryan Reynolds
Walker Scobell
Mark Ruffalo
1.2K User reviews
223 Critic reviews
55 Metascore
1 win & 16 nominations

Top cast 18

(as Zoe Saldaña)

Maya Sorian

Young Sorian Body Double

Paul the Bartender

8-year-old Adam

(uncredited)

University Student

Time Soldier
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Trivia When Louis Reed ( Mark Ruffalo ) says that he 'gets' a student's T-shirt during a lecture, the shirt has a picture of Nicolas Cage , but the name John Travolta under it. This is a reference to the John Woo film Face/Off (1997) in which the two actors played each other's characters. Cage and Ruffalo also had collaborated on Woo's Windtalkers (2002) .
Goofs At 1:27:09 Louis mentions the gun fires rounds that contain a magnetic steel core; so, the weapon itself should have been pulled towards the reactor at the start of the breach, considering it pulls all things magnetic towards it. This would include its contents.

Big Adam : Laura, this is... me.

Young Adam : Hi.

Laura : Parallel contact, babe?

Big Adam : Well, you know, you've always said that you wished you'd met me earlier. Here I am.

Connections Featured in MsMojo: Top 10 Memorable Kisses in Netflix Original Movies (2022)
Soundtracks Gimme Some Lovin Written by Spencer Davis , Muff Winwood (as Mervyn Winwood), Steve Winwood (as Stephen Lawrence Winwood) Performed by The Spencer Davis Group Courtesy of Island Records Ltd./Capitol Records under license from Universal Music Enterprises

User reviews 1.2K

Mar 26, 2022
How long is The Adam Project? Powered by Alexa
March 11, 2022 (United States)
United States
United Kingdom
Official Netflix
El proyecto Adam
British Columbia, Canada
21 Laps Entertainment
Maximum Effort
Skydance Media
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$116,000,000 (estimated)

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Runtime 1 hour 46 minutes
Dolby Atmos
Dolby Digital

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The adam project.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 17 Reviews
Kids Say 49 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Stylized violence, language in emotional time-travel tale.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 13+?

Frequent sci-fi action violence, plus bullying. Kids tease and punch an asthmati

"S--t," partial "motherf----r," "ass," "a--hole," "damn," "goddamn it," "bitch,"

Kissing, in one case passionately and presumably leading to sex. Jokes about "pe

Adults drink wine, liquor, and beer.

Car brands, beer signs at bar.

Any Positive Content?

Our time on earth is short. It's easier to be angry than sad, but sometimes you

People make personal sacrifices, including risking their own lives, for the larg

Main characters are mostly White except the lead character's wife, who is Black.

Violence & Scariness

Frequent sci-fi action violence, plus bullying. Kids tease and punch an asthmatic kid who's smaller than them. A character has a bleeding gunshot wound. A father died in a car accident. A sympathetic character is killed. Multiple deadly fights with futuristic soldiers, some fistfights and battles between humans. Futuristic weapons kill humans and robots by shooting, stabbing, disintegrating, electrocuting, beating. A tween attacks robots with a video game-like drone system. Car chases result in cars shot at, flipped over, and exploded. A man jokes about wanting to drown an annoying kid. A character has a stash of weapons in her floor.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

"S--t," partial "motherf----r," "ass," "a--hole," "damn," "goddamn it," "bitch," "hell," "crap," "moron," "jeez," "jerk," "balls," "turd-burper," "loser," "pee," "frickin'," "suck." "God" and "Christ" used as exclamations.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Kissing, in one case passionately and presumably leading to sex. Jokes about "penis," getting "laid," and a jacket that makes a man "look like a condom with buttons."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Positive messages.

Our time on earth is short. It's easier to be angry than sad, but sometimes you can forget there's a difference. Family provides a child's place in the world and sense of identity. Kids don't need a parent to be perfect; they just need a parent to be there for them. Sometimes scientific discoveries can be used for negative purposes. It pays to be a nerd.

Positive Role Models

People make personal sacrifices, including risking their own lives, for the larger good of humanity. Parents and kids learn they can support each other through difficult periods rather than retreating into their own emotions. Adults and kids both cover their true emotions with sarcasm and feigned indifference. A father shares his love and pride for his grown son.

Diverse Representations

Main characters are mostly White except the lead character's wife, who is Black. Main characters are "nerds" and scientists, and a running theme is how being a nerd can pay off.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that The Adam Project is a time-traveling mystery starring Jennifer Garner , Ryan Reynolds , and Zoe Saldana that has lots of action and humor, as well as emotional family drama that includes deaths of loved ones. A son has never properly forgiven his father for dying young and takes it out on his mother, who's also grieving. When an older version of himself shows up, he's drawn into an adventure that gives him the chance to go back in time and repair those relationships. But that adventure is quite dangerous, and while it allows the child to escape bullying kids who tease and punch him, it also puts his life in jeopardy repeatedly. Multiple deadly fights with futuristic soldiers involve weapons used to kill by shooting, stabbing (one bloody wound is treated), disintegrating, electrocuting, and beating. A tween attacks soldiers with a video game-like drone system. Car chases result in vehicles being shot at, flipped over, and exploded. A man jokes about wanting to drown an annoying kid. There's also a lot of language ("s--t," partial "motherf----r," "ass," "a--hole," "goddammit," "bitch," and more). Expect to see kissing, sexual innuendo, and drinking, too. Underlying the action are positive messages about the importance of family, the value of communicating genuine emotions, and the benefits of "being a nerd." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (17)
Kids say (49)

Based on 17 parent reviews

Potentially great movie to watch with kids Fails due to crude actor!

Not bad movie, pity about language, what's the story.

Left home alone one evening while his widowed mother ( Jennifer Garner ) goes out on a date, Young Adam (Walker Scobell) discovers a wounded man on his property at the start of THE ADAM PROJECT. The man ( Ryan Reynolds ) turns out to be an older version of himself, and he eventually explains that he has traveled back in time to discover how his wife ( Zoe Saldana ) was killed, and maybe save her. Time travel is possible thanks to technology initially created by Adam's dad ( Mark Ruffalo ) but put to nefarious use by his business partner, Maya Sorian ( Catherine Keener ). Big Adam has been followed back in time by Sorian and her robot-like soldiers, putting his life -- and that of his younger self -- in jeopardy.

Is It Any Good?

The real surprise in this fun, layered, time-traveling action mystery is the tenderness with which family relationships and sentiments are handled. The Adam Project gives its characters the opportunity to go back in time to right misdirected relationships and fix missed chances to fully express their feelings for each other. While the concept of time travel is nothing new (Young Adam's blue puffy vest could be a direct nod to Back to the Future's Marty McFly), the way it's handled here as a device for a more intimate character study is compelling. An especially moving scene is when Big Adam encounters his mom in a bar and helps her understand her son's feelings, as well as her own.

The action scenes and visual effects are of course well done (though the de-aging of Keener is a little creepy), and they're set to classic rock and choreographed with character-revealing dialogues. A memorable example is when Young Adam repeats Big Adam's condescending tough-guy advice back to him when the latter is in a vulnerable position. The actors here are cast to type: Reynolds as a wise-cracking reluctant hero, Garner as a mom, Saldana as a brave action hero, and Ruffalo as a scruffy sage. The discovery is Walker Scobell as Young Adam. He manages to match Reynolds' sarcasm, smarts, and knowing looks, rather than the other way around, acting that was necessary to make their oneness as versions of the same character believable. While the setting doesn't play a huge role, the lush forest right outside Adam's house is magical and vaguely reminiscent of scenes from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial .

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the two versions of Adam in The Adam Project . How are they alike and different? What do they learn from each other? What would you say to a younger version of yourself, given the chance?

What is the world of 2050 like, judging by the descriptions given by characters who have traveled back to 2022? What do you envision the future to look like?

How does this film weave action, drama, fantasy, and comedy together? What genre would you call the movie, if you had to pick just one?

Movie Details

On DVD or streaming : March 11, 2022
Cast : Ryan Reynolds , Walker Scobell , Mark Ruffalo
Director : Shawn Levy
Studio : Netflix
Genre : Fantasy
Topics : STEM , Magic and Fantasy , Adventures
Run time : 106 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : violence/action, language and suggestive references
Award : Common Sense Selection
Last updated : February 17, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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What to watch next.

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The Adam Project Feels Like a Fake Movie

The Adam Project doesn’t feel like a real movie. It feels phony both from the outside — Ryan Reynolds traveling back in time to meet his 12-year-old self and do battle against futuristic soldiers could be something you’d see on a movie poster in a not-too-inventive showbiz satire — and from the inside, too. It’s an assemblage of ideas from other popular films that just hangs there with little cohesion. It’s like watching a movie that hasn’t been made yet.

And the strangest thing is that The Adam Project seems to know this. The great challenge with Reynolds has always been how to handle the fundamental insincerity of his presence. He has a way of making everything he says feel predetermined. That can actually lead to some interesting performances, and he’s at his best in roles that embrace this calculated quality: He made a great con artist/gambler in Mississippi Grind and a convincingly patronizing frat bro in Van Wilder . Last year’s Free Guy wasn’t exactly great, but he was kind of perfect as a NPC, a non-playable character, who attains sentience; that robotic aura of his made sense for someone who existed entirely inside a video game.

Shawn Levy, the director of Free Guy , is also the man behind The Adam Project , and the two films do share an almost psychotic, all-you-can-eat derivativeness. Reynolds plays Adam Reed, whom we first see piloting some kind of futuristic spaceship in the year 2050, while nursing a wound in his stomach, right before he makes a time jump to the year 2022. He lands in the woods outside the home that he lived in as a child with his widowed mother (Jennifer Garner). Twelve-year-old Adam (Walker Scobell) is scrawny and asthmatic, a wise-ass constantly picked on by bullies. But the boy quickly realizes that this wounded, buff, cynical soldier is his future adult self, and before we know it, the two of them are off on the next stage of Adam’s mysterious mission to undo the past.

It’s not actually that mysterious. The time-travel technology of the future was, we learn, invented by Adam’s late scientist father, Louis (Mark Ruffalo), in 2018, in a collaboration with wealthy businesswoman Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener). In 2050, Sorian has somehow used this technology to turn Earth into a hellhole. (We have to take the movie’s word for it — or rather Adam’s, when he notes that The Terminator would be “a good day” in the future. We don’t really see any such thing.) So the two Adams now have to jump back to 2018 and stop their father from turning time travel into a thing. I think. My brain shut off after a certain point.

It’s all quite silly, but at least the latter parts of the film allow us to spend some time with Ruffalo, who brings the kind of emotional openness and engagement that Reynolds refuses to. That is actually an interesting contrast between the two actors, and it could even be an interesting plot point in some future version of this movie that was put together with something resembling care. (Sadly, the great Keener is not as lucky as Ruffalo. She’s thoroughly wasted. In fact, she’s worse than wasted. In some later scenes that present us with an awkwardly de-aged version of her, Keener is actually turned, through the magic of modern motion picture visual-effects technology, into a bad actress.)

Regarding the movie’s premise: You probably have a lot of questions at this point. I assure you that The Adam Project does not answer any of them. It’s a film designed to thumb its nose at geeks who might wonder just what exactly this movie’s conception of time travel entails, but it also isn’t going to satisfy those of us who think films already spend too much time trying to make all their fake science work. This isn’t exactly Claire Denis’s High Life or Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris . Shawn Levy isn’t going to counter nerdy obsessives with fuck-you formalism.

No, Levy simply wants to entertain, which is certainly a noble goal. He has paced the film at such breakneck speed that he presumably hopes we’ll be having too much fun to wonder how any of this works. But it’s not just the dorky sci-fi stuff that goes out the window. The emotional logic is discarded as well. When the two Adams meet, the older Adam assures us that the younger Adam is annoying as hell. And yet, the exact opposite seems to be true; the kid seems like a pretty average kid, while grown-up Adam is the irritating smart-ass. Is this intentional? Who knows? Who cares? The movie has lots of ideas, but it doesn’t follow through on any of them. Over and over, it just moves onto the next disjointed plot point. Derivativeness in and of itself isn’t always a problem. Even corporate cynicism isn’t necessarily a problem. But when it’s all handled this shoddily, what comes through is crass, careless opportunism.

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The Adam Project Review

11 Mar 2022

The Adam Project

After working together on last year’s Truman Show -esque action-comedy Free Guy , director Shawn Levy and star Ryan Reynolds are back in the saddle, this time on an original sci-fi romp with a timey-wimey twist. Cinematic nostalgia is still the order of the day as we collectively continue to seek reminders of better times, and Levy’s movie — based on a T.S. Nowlin spec script from 2012 — duly obliges, offering a throwback slice of escapism with plenty of heart.

Adam Reed (Ryan Reynolds) is a time-travelling pilot on a mission to find his wife Laura (a typically strong Zoe Saldana ), who went missing under mysterious circumstances. Pursued by the villainous Sorian ( Catherine Keener ) — a vacuous big bad who exists almost solely to send baddies to their lightsabering doom — Adam crash-lands in the present day, where he makes an unlikely friend in his younger self (Walker Scobell). Merciless Reynoldsian ribbing, several opened cans of whoop-ass and some earnest soul-searching ensue as the two Adams search for Laura, fend off Sorian, and find themselves travelling back in time to meet their late father ( Mark Ruffalo , giving 13 Going On 30 fans the reunion with an excellent Jennifer Garner they’ve desired), who turns out to be the inventor of time travel.

Levy’s cinematic eye for otherwise innocuous details really leaves a lasting impression.

Working in the ’80s Amblin tradition (echoes of Back To The Future and E.T. are rarely far away), Levy uses the fantastical conceit of The Adam Project to offer a film that’s constantly searching for moments of emotional intimacy within the broader blockbuster framework. The genre’s bread-and-butter tropes are all present and correct here — gigantic spaceships, pew-pews, vrooshes and high-stakes showdowns — though their application mostly serves as a reminder of a dozen other films that made better use of them. What plays to the director’s strengths are the small, personal moments: an overdue hug, a whispered apology or a simple game of catch. Levy’s cinematic eye for otherwise innocuous details really leaves a lasting impression.

The real aces up Levy’s sleeve here are newcomer Walker Scobell and Ryan Reynolds. 13-year-old Scobell — a Deadpool megafan — uncannily nails Reynolds’ cadence and sardonic wit as a young Adam, commanding the lion’s share of the film’s big laughs. Opposite him, Reynolds — galvanised by a script that resonated with his own emotional response to losing his father in 2020 — digs deep to portray a man whose biting humour is used to hide a storm of emotions within. It’s arguably his best performance since 2010’s Buried (one scene with Garner, who plays Adam’s mum, is a career best). When the film gives the two Adams space to work through their grief together, allowing Scobell and Reynolds to really explore the way loss shapes and reshapes us over the course of our lives, it’s beautiful.

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‘The Adam Project’ review: Ryan Reynolds sci-fi goes back to the future

The 'Free Guy' star borrows from classic cinema to serve up a derivative time-travel adventure

T his high-concept time travel movie was first mooted in 2012 as a Tom Cruise vehicle called Our Name Is Adam . Then, well, nothing much happened until 2020, when it was retooled as a Ryan Reynolds showcase and picked up by Netflix . But sadly, though The Adam Project reunites Reynolds with Free Guy director Shawn Levy, it lacks that film’s kinetic energy and unexpected charm.

The film’s premise is familiar – Back to the Future is a very obvious influence – but not without promise. Reynolds plays Adam Reed, a wisecracking fighter pilot from 2050 who travels back in time to save the life of soulmate Laura (Zoe Saldaña). Adam’s mission wasn’t exactly authorised by his megalomaniac boss Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener), so when he botches his coordinates, he ends up crash landing in 2022 with her henchmen in hot pursuit. Here, he comes face-to-face with his 12-year-old self, played gamely by Walker Scobell. The young actor has Reynolds’s facial expressions and speech cadence nailed, so Levy has fun letting them bicker a bit before they become mates.

Sadly, little else in The Adam Project feels quite so effortless. The slightly convoluted storyline involves young and old Adam venturing back in time – again – to convince their dead dad, visionary scientist Louis Reed (Mark Ruffalo), to bury the tech that will eventually make time travel possible. That way, they can stop Keener’s underwritten villain from interfering with the past to make herself even richer in the future. Inevitably, there’s a lot of talk about whether their own interference in the past is strictly ethical, but for the sake of the story they never stop and think about it for too long. The vibe here is more glib than cerebral.

The CGI-heavy fight scenes are compelling enough, though the final showdown is so silly and predictable it almost feels like something from an Austin Powers movie. The main problem, though, is that none of the four credited screenwriters has managed to flesh out these characters in any meaningful way. Reynolds gives us his usual post- Deadpool blend of quips and sinew, but it feels like a case of diminishing returns here. Neither Ruffalo nor Saldaña are given much to work with, but they’re positively spoiled compared to Jennifer Garner, who’s wasted playing a two-dimensional careworn mum type. It feels telling that her character is the only one who’s never told what is actually going on.

Because of this humanity vacuum, the film’s emotional beats feel strained and awkward; often, Levy relies too heavily on Rob Simonsen’s mawkish score to tell us to feel something. The result: an inoffensive but forgettable sci-fi trifle that probably isn’t worth anyone’s precious time.

Director: Shawn Levy
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Zoe Saldaña, Mark Ruffalo
Release date: March 11 (Netflix)
Related Topics

Netflix’s shallow time-travel yarn The Adam Project lets Ryan Reynolds do his thing

It’s an amiable take on Spielbergian adventure, with a strong sentimental side

by Katie Rife

Zoe Saldana and Ryan Reynolds stand side by side outdoors in The Adam Project, with Zoe pointing a giant-ass glowing futuristic gun at the camera

The idea that the world is speeding up is, for the most part, a lie people tell themselves to deny that they’re getting older. Even onscreen, a perceived acceleration may be an illusion: Yes, an average 21st-century film has more and quicker edits than one made before 1980, thanks to developments in technology and the rise of the “MTV style.” But the back-and-forth in a 21st-century Marvel movie is no faster than that of a 1940s screwball comedy. (It might be slower, actually.) So while Netflix’s science fiction comedy The Adam Project may feel like an Amblin Entertainment film played at 1.5 speed for viewers who grew up with those movies, the reasons for that go beyond the cruel distortions of time.

One major factor behind the film’s rat-a-tat energy is star Ryan Reynolds: He’s Deadpool, for God’s sake. Rapid-fire sarcasm is a cornerstone of his brand. Writer-director Shawn Levy has already collaborated with Reynolds (on 2021’s Free Guy ) and shot eight episodes of Stranger Things , so combining the two is a logical next step. When Levy and Reynolds — both co-producers on the film — play to their strengths, The Adam Project is zippy, agreeable sci-fi fun that produces a few good chuckles. But in moments where undiluted sweetness is required, the film’s glib writing stands out in a negative way.

The film opens in 2050, just outside Earth’s orbit, where Adam (Reynolds) — a classic “hotshot pilot who plays by his own rules” type — is preparing to steal a time-traveling jet. Adam is desperate to go back to 2018, for reasons that quickly become clear. But he accidentally crash-lands in 2022, with a bullet in his side and a bio-linked ship that won’t start until his injury heals. (The movie is full of “Okay, I guess” contrivances of this type.) So he breaks into the backyard of his 12-year-old self, a smaller, more asthmatic, but equally smart-mouthed version of Adam (Walker Scobell).

Ryan Reynolds faces off against a Twiki-looking robot in The Adam Project

Adult Adam needs young Adam’s DNA to start his ship. Young Adam needs adult Adam to help him work through some issues related to the recent death of their father Louis (Mark Ruffalo), a brilliant but neglectful physicist. So the two set out on a rollicking adventure through space (well, just across town) and time (but only, like, five years) to stop the Louis of 2018 from achieving the scientific breakthroughs that will make time travel a reality. Sidelines with Zoe Saldaña as adult Adam’s courageous wife Laura and Jennifer Garner as both Adams’ predictably put-upon mom Ellie imply that women serve as tempering influences for Adam at both ages. But for the most part, this story is more about Adam’s relationship with his dad — and himself.

Reynolds and Scobell have a winning chemistry as the two Adams, coordinating their body language and bouncing playful insults off each other throughout the film. (A moment where the two giggle as Reynolds makes his bullet wound “fart” is surprisingly sweet.) The idea of a child meeting their adult self or an adult traveling back in time to right the wrongs of their childhood have both been explored in other movies — including 13 Going on 30, another film that cast Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo as a couple. The Adam Project ’s four-person writing team is hyper-aware of that fact, just as they’re clearly aware that Adam fights with a weapon that looks a lot like a lightsaber, against a villain whose scheme to create a Terminator future resembles Biff Tanner’s plan in Back to the Future Part II.

Levy handles these references in a lighter way than, say, Ready Player One , however. The Adam Project ’s purpose seems to be more to make a movie in the spirit of an ’80s family-friendly sci-fi adventure than to leech off the goodwill audiences have toward pre-existing films. That being said, Levy does stage some action in a forest straight out of E.T. , and young Adam wears a puffy Marty McFly vest throughout the film. But again, these winks are wielded with the intention of creating the same type of wonder in today’s kids as Spielberg’s films did 40 years ago, while still nodding to the ‘80s-kid parents sitting next to them on the couch. And there are moments specifically designed to thrill viewers around young Adam’s age, like the scene where he takes down a gaggle of robotic bad guys with drones controlled by his VR helmet. If this was 1989, it would have been a Nintendo Power Glove.

Perhaps it goes without saying that The Adam Project glides over the paradoxes of time travel, acknowledging that the two Adams hanging out should unravel the space-time continuum, but never really explaining why it doesn’t. ( Primer this is not.) That’s forgivable, given that the film moves too quickly, and too cheerfully, to dwell on any scientific conundrums.

Young Adam and Big Adam (Ryan Reynolds) navigate a dark blue forest on a glowing flying platform in The Adam Project

But it is indicative of how The Adam Project loses its grip when the stakes become a little higher. Catherine Keener is oddly cast as the film’s Big Bad, for example, playing her character neither as an over-the-top supervillain nor as a credible threat. (Netflix also trots out some of that Irishman technology to put Keener’s face on a body double in scenes where she interacts with her younger self.) And a romantic interlude between Garner and Ruffalo is a little too quippy for its own good.

One emotional note The Adam Project hits perfectly is dead-dad schmaltz — again, unsurprising, given the palette of influences Levy is working with here. Family storylines are a hallmark of the ’80s kids’ adventure movies being lovingly re-created in The Adam Project , and it’s worth noting that the film does slow down, both in terms of pacing and dialogue, for the sentimental scenes between father and son(s). When dealing with more adult emotions — say, corporate greed or romantic love — the film can’t help but undercut them with defensive sarcasm. But its exploration of the wounds of childhood comes from a more earnest place.

The years go faster as we grow older, but the hurts we suffered as children stay frozen until we address them. The form of therapy presented in The Adam Project is obviously impossible, and more than a little simplistic. But in a film that rockets out of the gate with such breakneck speed, it’s unexpectedly affecting when it gets down to the business of healing Adam’s inner child — or outer child, as the case may be. So while The Adam Project may make E.T. seem sluggish, its heart is in the same vulnerable place.

The Adam Project debuts on Netflix on March 11.

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After achieving success with last year's Free Guy , director Shawn Levy and star Ryan Reynolds collaborated again on Netflix's new sci-fi movie, The Adam Project . The two films are cut from a similar cloth, seemingly modeled after original, high-concept genre films prevalent in the 1980s ( Back to the Future and E.T. were cited as Adam Project influences). Free Guy was a pleasant surprise, earning praise from critics and audiences, raising expectations for the duo's next outing. Fortunately, this latest work delivers. The Adam Project is a charming and fun sci-fi throwback, fueled by a strong script and one of Reynolds' best performances.

Reynolds stars in The Adam Project as Adam Reed, a fighter pilot who time travels from the year 2050 and finds himself in the present day. There, he encounters his younger self (Walker Scobell), a 12-year-old kid grieving the death of his father, Louis (Mark Ruffalo) and making life even more difficult for his mourning mother, Ellie (Jennifer Garner). On a desperate mission to save the future, the older Adam enlists the help of his younger self to thwart Maya Sorian's (Kathleen Turner) plans.

Related: Netflix: Every Movie & TV Show Releasing In March 2022

Ryan Reynolds Mark Ruffalo and Walker Scobell in The Adam Project

The Adam Project mercifully doesn't get bogged down in time travel mechanics, wasting little time to get the two Adams together on their journey. The rules the film follows will largely be familiar to anyone who's seen similar titles The Adam Project draws inspiration from. Big Adam and Young Adam's dynamic is a greater focus in the script and their relationship with their parents is the movie's emotional core. Young Adam is a nuisance for Ellie, treating her poorly as she tries to keep her head above water. In contrast, Big Adam harbors strong animosity towards Louis. Conversations between the two Adams help them see things from a different perspective, fueling poignant and effective arcs. The sci-fi elements are an entertaining backdrop for a story that's about something much more, allowing The Adam Project to pull at the heartstrings.

Reynolds is reliably embodying an onscreen persona audiences are familiar with, though he is given moments of emotional sincerity to help flesh the character out. In particular, his interactions with Ruffalo and Zoe Saldana (playing Big Adam's wife, Laura) are quite moving, efficiently conveying pertinent information about the characters' relationships to get audiences invested. Reynolds also has excellent chemistry with Scobell, a perfect choice to play a smart-mouthed, younger version of his character. The two play off of each other very well — whether the scene calls for dramatic beats or comedy (the script has some amusing meta jokes about Reynolds). Turner is oddly the weakest link in the supporting cast, though that has more to do with the writing than her performance. Maya comes across as a two-dimensional, power-hungry villain who is just an obstacle for the Adams to overcome.

Zoe Saldana and Ryan Reynolds in The Adam Project

In terms of sci-fi action, The Adam Project doesn't reinvent the wheel (though there are some neat visuals and concepts). What makes it click is the strength of the characters and their personal stories, getting viewers invested in what's happening onscreen. While the Adams' personal journeys are great, there is a bit of a disconnect with the larger genre plot. Issues with the storytelling stem from telling rather than showing, especially as the terrible 2050s future Big Adam is trying to prevent is hardly shown. This negatively impacts the overall stakes a little bit, but isn't enough to weigh the film down. As a time travel story and a narrative about coming to terms with loss, The Adam Project works well with its fast pace and fun moments.

Levy is developing more movies with Reynolds, and it's safe to say the pair have a winning formula. The Adam Project should generate anticipation for whatever's next — be it Free Guy 2 or another original title. It harkens back to the classic Amblin films (including E.T. and the Back to the Future trilogy) and refreshingly isn't occupied with setting up a franchise. The Adam Project is the kind of high-profile film that likely would have found success at the box office, so it'll probably be a major hit for Netflix, giving the streamer an entertaining genre film with wide appeal. Those who enjoyed Levy and Reynolds' earlier works will find something to latch onto here.

Next: Watch The Adam Project Trailer

The Adam Project will be available to stream on Netflix on March 11, 2022. It runs 106 minutes and is rated PG-13 for violence/action, language, and suggestive references.

The Adam Project

The Adam Project is a sci-fi action/comedy starring Ryan Reynolds as a time-traveling pilot who accidentally arrives in the past and must work with his 12-year-old self to save the future. Adam Reed (Reynolds) heads back from his time in 2050 to save his wife in 2018. When things go awry, he crashes his time-traveling aircraft in 2022, where his 12-year-old self finds him. Chased into their timeline, they're attacked by the leader of the dystopian future and must escape their grasp and fight to change and save their future.

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The Adam Project Review: A Refreshing Throwback to ’80s Adventure

By Jonathan Sim

Following the success of their 2021 action-comedy Free Guy , director Shawn Levy and actor Ryan Reynolds reunite for their newest movie, The Adam Project . This sci-fi action-adventure stars Reynolds as Adam Reed, a time traveler who meets himself as a 12-year-old boy after crash-landing in 2022 and enlists the help of his younger self for a mission to stop the creation of time travel and save the world.

In a blockbuster movie climate filled to the brim with superhero movies, many of us, myself included, have watched movies that came out in the ’80s and ’90s and thought, “Damn, they don’t make movies like this anymore.” However, after Levy and Reynolds cracked cinematic success with a new IP summer blockbuster hit in 2021, their newest project is the type of movie Hollywood doesn’t often make anymore. It may be a movie featuring the talents of the actors of Deadpool, Hulk, Gamora, and Elektra, but this is a refreshing film in the backdrop of never-ending superhero content.

This movie was everything I wanted it to be. It was a throwback to the whimsical adventures of decades past, with influences ranging from Star Wars to Back to the Future . The movie is unafraid to throw in quick references to its references, and it succeeds in recapturing the childlike wonder of that era. Adventurous and inspiring at every turn, this movie has space travel, time travel, and every type of travel that will keep you entertained throughout its exceedingly well-paced runtime.

Reynolds is electric in this movie as Adam, a fighter pilot who needs help on a journey through time. While Reynolds is an easy actor to poke fun at for always playing characters with similar personalities, his sarcastic humor leads to excellent comedic moments. This is an exceedingly well-written film as Reynolds isn’t spouting punchline after punchline, but every time he does, the movie becomes hilarious. He is matched by Walker Scobell, who portrays a 12-year-old Adam. Scobell is a star in the making, perfectly capturing Reynolds’s comedic timing and even recycling Deadpool’s “superhero landing” joke.

The action sequences are a thing to behold. Levy knows how to make the punches feel hard, and he throws everything he has at these sequences. There are fight scenes, a car chase, a jet chase, and every single one is marvelously helmed. In addition, the movie has fun with its science-fiction technology, with Adam using a weapon similar to a lightsaber but with a new twist. There are drones and invisible jets and many inventive ideas that lead to delightful action scenes.

While Free Guy felt like a movie made primarily for entertainment, The Adam Project goes a bit further by spending a surprising amount of time building character conflicts. Early on, we learn that Adam’s father died in a car accident, and as a child, Adam did not know how to process it. Having an older Adam speak to his younger self leads both versions of the same character to have revelations about themselves, revealing their deeply flawed core. The movie uses time travel not just for an enjoyable story but also to create a fascinating character dynamic.

The Adam Project is much more than a forgettable action flick with time travel. By using time travel to show a man seeing his former self make mistakes and doing everything he can to fix them, the film becomes about a person facing his younger self and his own problems head-on. The places the movie takes the character are awe-inspiring, and the film’s attention to fleshing out our protagonist is what makes the movie better than just another disposable Netflix movie.

Sometimes the best types of movies are the ones that do everything well. The Adam Project has equal amounts of action, adventure, sci-fi, comedy, and drama, complete with a splash of romance. We also have an all-star cast with Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner in a 13 Going On 30 reunion, Zoe Saldaña as Adam’s wife, and Catherine Keener as the antagonist, Sorian. Unfortunately, Sorian may be the weakest link out of everything in the film, as the movie is so focused on the heroes that the villain is the most underwritten aspect of the film.

While Sorian won’t top any best villain lists, this is still a beautifully stylish movie with Levy’s excellent eye for excitement. It feels like a Spielberg film, the type of ’80s movie a child watches at a young age and grows up to have nostalgia for. With Reynolds’s big mouth, kick-ass action sequences, some great laughs, and even greater character drama, The Adam Project is a monumental success that you should recommend to anyone who wants a good movie to kick back, relax, and enjoy.

SCORE : 9/10

As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 9 equates to “Excellent.” Entertainment that reaches this level is at the top of its type. The gold standard that every creator aims to reach.

Jonathan Sim is a film critic and filmmaker born and raised in New York City. He has met/interviewed some of the leading figures in Hollywood, including Christopher Nolan, Zendaya, Liam Neeson, and Denis Villeneueve. He also works as a screenwriter, director, and producer on independent short films.

Review: 'The Adam Project' is an irresistible nostalgia trip

Nobody does it better than Ryan Reynolds when it comes to taking an action adventure and lacing it with snarky humor and sneaky heart.

"The Adam Project," now streaming on Netflix, owes a sci-fi debt to "Back to the Future. But Reynolds spins the laughs at his own speed.

Having perfected his wise-cracking banter in two "Deadpool" blockbusters, Reynolds recycles it as Adam Reed, a fighter pilot who zips back 30 years to his 2022 boyhood to destroy the concept of time travel that his late father, Louis (Mark Ruffalo), helped invent.

MORE: Review: 'The Tourist' is a ferocious thriller that relentlessly keeps you hanging on

His trip also breaks the rules of parallel contact by bringing Adam face-to-face with his 12-year-old self (Walker Scobell), who is at least his smug equal at sassy backtalk. Scobell claims that he memorized both "Deadpool" movies. It shows. He's a Reynolds mini-Me.

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"I've spent 30 years trying to get away from the me that was you," says Adam to his younger self. Fat chance. Young Adam may be emotionally bruised, but the boy has a mouth on him.

When a fellow student torments him at school, the kid takes a licking but not before delivering a verbal punch: "Did you just buy a bully starter kit on Amazon or something?"

You get the picture. And it mostly works because Reynolds and Scobell make a dynamite team. Both are wounded by the untimely passing of their dad, but both are unable to articulate the loss even to their widowed mom, played with sweetness and steel by Jennifer Garner.

Director Shawn Levy, who worked with Reynolds on "Free Guy," brings genuine intimacy to the family scenes as child and man try to heal each other. But "The Adam Project" is soon distracted by a busy narrative that comes off more mechanical than moving.

Suddenly, Adam is reunited with his MIA soldier wife Laura ("Avatar" star Zoe Saldana) and hatching a plan to take down the evil Maya Sorian, a miscast Catherine Keener, who has turned time travel into a salable drug that she's willing to kill for in the name of profit.

Sorian also has a fleet of robot stormtroopers, who, when shot, explode into a confetti of pixels. It's a shame that the sci-fi elements of "The Adam Project" feel like warmed-over Steven Spielberg epics from the 1980s (think "E.T." and "Indiana Jones") that Levy can't hope to match.

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Luckily, "The Adam Project" returns in the knick of time to what matters most: the humanity of its characters.

Ruffalo brings smarts and warmth to the role of a workaholic scientist who regrets the time he didn't spend with his wife and son. The flashbacks to 2018 are a reunion for Ruffalo and Garner, whose 2004 cult hit "13 Going on 30" still brings on the feelies.

It's hard to imagine a parent who won't relate when Adam embraces his father with the understanding and lack of resentment that only comes from hindsight. Talk about wish fulfillment. Not since another 1980's hit, "Field of Dreams," has a movie tapped so shamelessly into the bond between father and son. Bring tissues.

Yes, "The Adam Project" falls into sentimental traps, and, yes, it coasts down well-worn roads instead of paving new ones with fresh imagination. But you'll laugh, cry and cheer at this cynicism-free throwback to ‘80s family entertainment. As a nostalgia trip, it's irresistible.

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Why 'The Adam Project' is a different kind of Ryan Reynolds project

Glen Weldon

Adam (Ryan Reynolds) and Young Adam (Walker Scobell) spend The Adam Project needling each other in a timestack. Netflix hide caption

Adam (Ryan Reynolds) and Young Adam (Walker Scobell) spend The Adam Project needling each other in a timestack.

The Adam Project is a light, clever, consummately PG-13 time-travel yarn about Adam (Ryan Reynolds), a pilot from the future, who travels back in time to prevent [REDACTED] from [REDACTED]ing — only to overshoot and wind up further in the past than planned. He's forced, for reasons that do not stand up to even the breeziest moment of reflection, to enlist the aid of his 12-year-old self (a legitimately funny, bracingly unprecocious Walker Scobell), thereby risking precisely the kind of time paradox that time-travel films cannot exist without risking.

Understand: In terms of moviemaking, no genre is redefined, here; no game gets changed. But the Netflix film is a relatively streamlined affair that moves at a gratifyingly brisk clip, wasting little time on backstory (or forwardstory, or alternatetimelinestory, for that matter). It manages to feel intimate, as it never leaves its setting in present-day Rainier, Washington, where Young Adam and his mother (Jennifer Garner!) share one of those gorgeous glass-walled houses nestled deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest that instantly transforms The Adam Project into a two-screen experience because you'll find yourself envy-surfing Zillow listings on your phone while you watch. Its cast is low-key terrific (Catherine Keener as the villain! Zoe Saldana as Adam's (very) close ally! Mark Ruffalo as Adam's dad!), and Reynolds and Scobell have an easy, unforced chemistry.

The film's fine — pretty good, actually. It's a very deliberate, if at times too-dutiful, homage to movies like Back to the Future , E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and, especially, Flight of the Navigator . Recommended, if you and your kids are looking for something to pass a gray March weekend afternoon.

But that's not what I've called you all here to discuss.

Let's talk Ryan Reynolds, you and me. And why The Adam Project feels like a small but significant — and possibly even hopeful — departure for him.

The Van Wilder effect

Look: Ryan Reynolds is a star. He's handsome, charismatic, fit and funny.

That magnetic star quality was evident as far back as his ABC sitcom, Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place , which debuted in 1998 and ran for four uneven seasons. On that show, he first locked into a persona that solidified around him in the 2002 film Van Wilder : The Popular Guy.

Y'all remember The Popular Guy from school. He was most likely a jock, possibly even a quarterback, but not the meat-headed kind that'd push you and your fellow nerds into lockers. No, he was the other kind of jock, the kind that wasn't looking for a career in the NFL, but only trying to gain some leadership experience and expand his extracurriculars.

The poster for National Lampoon's Van Wilder.

He carried himself with a confidence that he always worried might get mistaken for cockiness or swagger, so he took pains to keep in check. He cracked jokes, sure, but was always careful not to cut anyone down. Teachers loved him, students envied him. He was on a first-name basis with the custodian, with whom he talked car-racing; the lunch-servers snuck him extra tater tots. He went out of his way to ask to sign your yearbook at graduation, though you'd never talked to each other; when you read it later, you found that he'd left his number and invited you over to his house to swim at his pool over the summer. You knew that this was just a cruel joke that he and his friends were pulling, and you had just a scosh too much self-respect to ever actually make that phone call, yet it's true that the first time you read his note, you flushed with a stupid kind of excitement, imagining for one magical instant that you'd somehow fundamentally misread the previous four miserable years of high school and okay I now realize what I'm describing may have been something less than a universal experience and more of a Me Thing so uh let me get back on track and refocus on my original thesis.

Anyway: Ryan Reynolds, Popular Guy.

Again and again, he's chosen roles that highlight what comes easiest to him: Witty banter, mischievous humor, ingratiating charm. And he's carefully blended it with something that comes much less naturally: A pitched self-deprecation we can tell is a put-on, a carefully calculated gambit to win us over and convince us that he's just a regular guy.

He's not of course; he's Ryan Reynolds, movie star.

But there's a difference between choosing roles suited to your gifts and using your gifts to force roles into suiting yourself. The Ryan Reynolds who starred in The Hitman's Bodyguard and Red Notice and Green Lantern and R.I.P.D . and The Change-Up and 6 Underground and The Proposal and the Deadpool films is essentially the same guy, cracking jokes (or, in the case of the Deadpool films, making references ) and coasting on trickster charm.

Movie stars possess and exploit definable personae, to be sure. And certainly the actor has made efforts to stretch into more grounded territory before ( Buried, Woman in Gold ). But Reynolds' growing reliance on his repertoire of easily recognizable actorly tics has caused something to happen.

Too easily, and too often, his natural charm can spill over into off-putting smarm. His wittiness can read as mere glibness. That cockiness he's so careful to couch in performative, over-compensating self-deprecation can leak out and reveal itself to the world.

Last year's wildly overwrought Free Guy — Reynolds' previous pairing with The Adam Project director Shawn Levy — attempted to correct for all this by having him play a literal computer-generated cipher, a background video game character (just a regular guy, named: Guy) who gets upgraded and leveled up into a hero.

Ryan Reynolds as Big Adam and Jennifer Garner as Ellie in The Adam Project. Doane Gregory/Netflix hide caption

Ryan Reynolds as Big Adam and Jennifer Garner as Ellie in The Adam Project.

The Adam Project as acting project

Make no mistake: The Ryan Reynolds on display in The Adam Project is a familiar one. He's funny in the way he usually is, he's handsome and buff and charismatic as ever.

But the reason his performance works as well as it does is that he doesn't lunge at it, in the way we've come to expect him to. Consequently, the film feels slightly less like the Ryan Reynolds vehicle it was no doubt conceived to be. He hasn't disappeared into the role of time-traveling pilot Adam by any means, he's just doing a bit less obvious, outward work to embody it.

Perhaps it's a function that Adam is a smaller, less antic character than the ones Reynolds usually assays — he's more purpose-driven, sadder. Maybe it's that the script gives him more moments to breathe as an actor, as in an emotional scene he shares with Garner in a bar. It's a scene that risks coming off as sentimental, even syrupy, and that's probably why it lands so nimbly — because we can see Reynolds actually risking something in it.

It's also possible that the performance works because so much of it exists in the interplay between the two Adams — Reynolds and Scobell. In their many scenes together, Reynolds allows his familiar, keyed-up, outward persona to recede, in order to really listen to the other, younger actor, who doesn't so much steal focus as confidently accept it. (The kid's terrific, really.)

There's yet another Deadpool on the way, where Reynolds will find himself back on his home, Glib 'n' Smarmy TM turf. But The Adam Project , as pleasantly slight as it is, gestures toward a career trajectory the actor might enjoy in the years to come, after that jawline softens, that tight bod inevitably enDaddens itself, and his characteristic brio settles into the less effortful confidence of middle-age.

COMMENTS

The Adam Project movie review (2022)
The action and fight scenes are very well staged, especially one with a tender reunion in the midst of the mayhem. Big Adam's warming to his younger version gives the story some heart in the midst of the mayhem as well. There is genuine tenderness in his realization that anger does not prevent sadness and that second chances are possible.
The Adam Project
The Adam Project is not a perfect film, but it's exactly the kind of film we need right now: a highly enjoyable adventure with the right dose of nostalgia and plenty of heart. Rated: 3.5/5 ...
'The Adam Project' Review: Back Talk to the Future
'The Adam Project' Review: Back Talk to the Future
The Adam Project
The Adam Project will undoubtedly be a big hit for Shawn Levy, Ryan Reynolds, and Netflix. The film goes beyond its sci-fi time travel tropes and delivers some wonderful character-rich performances.
'The Adam Project' Review
Ryan Reynolds in Netflix's 'The Adam Project': Film Review. The star reteams with 'Free Guy' director Shawn Levy, playing a time traveler who returns to fix the world while reconnecting ...
The Adam Project Review
Best of all, the chemistry between young and future Adam is just about perfect. Their back and forth is truly inspired, giving the film a humorous edge as future Adam rediscovers what a dork he ...
'The Adam Project': Ryan Reynolds in a Back-to-the-Future ...
'The Adam Project' Review: Ryan Reynolds Meets His 12-Year-Old Self in Shawn Levy's Back-to-the-Future Action Confection Reviewed online, March 8, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG-13.
The Adam Project review: Ryan Reynolds confronts his younger self in
The movie-logic premise of it all, at least, is hard to argue with: Time travel exists, and Reynold's circa-2050 Adam Reed is somehow able to revisit his 12-year-old self (Walker Scobell) without ...
The Adam Project (2022)
The Adam Project: Directed by Shawn Levy. With Ryan Reynolds, Walker Scobell, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Garner. After accidentally crash-landing in 2022, time-traveling fighter pilot Adam Reed teams up with his 12-year-old self for a mission to save the future.
The Adam Project Movie Review
Our review: Parents say (17 ): Kids say (49 ): The real surprise in this fun, layered, time-traveling action mystery is the tenderness with which family relationships and sentiments are handled. The Adam Project gives its characters the opportunity to go back in time to right misdirected relationships and fix missed chances to fully express ...
Movie Review: Netflix and Ryan Reynolds' 'The Adam Project'
The Adam Project. Feels Like a Fake Movie. The Adam Project doesn't feel like a real movie. It feels phony both from the outside — Ryan Reynolds traveling back in time to meet his 12-year-old ...
The Adam Project
See All 48 Critic Reviews. 10. jakisco. Apr 4, 2022. This movie should first and foremost be considered a family movie. The action and Sci-fi comes in second hand and yes, if you are expecting an action packed movie or a mind blowing Sci-fi you might get disappointed. The story focuses on the family and the feelings is what makes this movie ...
The Adam Project Review
When rogue pilot Adam Reed (Reynolds), a time traveller from the year 2050, accidentally crash-lands in 2022, he finds himself face-to-face with his 12-year-old self (Scobell). Together, the pair ...
'The Adam Project' review: Ryan Reynolds goes back to the future
But sadly, though The Adam Project reunites Reynolds with Free Guy director Shawn Levy, it lacks that film's kinetic energy and unexpected charm. The film's premise is familiar - Back to the ...
The Adam Project review: Netflix sci-fi movie lets Ryan ...
The Adam Project's purpose seems to be more to make a movie in the spirit of an '80s family-friendly sci-fi adventure than to leech off the goodwill audiences have toward pre-existing films.
The Adam Project
The Adam Project is like a leap into the past - a film that revels in the sci-fi nerdiness of the '80s while packing epic adventure and heartfelt life lessons into a fun, time traveling yarn. Of course, young Adam is suitably freaked out upon meeting his older self - at least at first. Thankfully, it's not long before the two Adams are ...
'The Adam Project' review: Ryan Reynolds comes back from the future in
"The Adam Project" recalls the past in cinematic terms by feeling conspicuously like what used to be dubbed a "B" movie, a genre that no longer has much traction in theaters.
The Adam Project Review: Old & Young Ryan Reynolds Capture Spielberg Magic
The Adam Project. 4.0. The Adam Project is a sci-fi action/comedy starring Ryan Reynolds as a time-traveling pilot who accidentally arrives in the past and must work with his 12-year-old self to save the future. Adam Reed (Reynolds) heads back from his time in 2050 to save his wife in 2018. When things go awry, he crashes his time-traveling ...
The Adam Project Review: Ryan Reynolds Shines in '80s Throwback
The Adam Project Review: A Refreshing Throwback to '80s Adventure. March 10, 2022. ... director Shawn Levy and actor Ryan Reynolds reunite for their newest movie, The Adam Project. This sci-fi ...
Review: 'The Adam Project' is an irresistible nostalgia trip
Review: 'The Adam Project' is an irresistible nostalgia trip. Nobody does it better than Ryan Reynolds when it comes to taking an action adventure and lacing it with snarky humor and sneaky heart. "The Adam Project," now streaming on Netflix, owes a sci-fi debt to "Back to the Future. But Reynolds spins the laughs at his own speed.
'The Adam Project' review: A less-glib Ryan Reynolds makes for a bold
Mark Ruffalo as Adam's dad!), and Reynolds and Scobell have an easy, unforced chemistry. Let's talk Ryan Reynolds, you and me. And why The Adam Project feels like a small but significant — and ...
'The Adam Project' movie review: Ryan Reynolds and Shawn Levy ('Free
"The Adam Project " is part sci-fi action thriller and part family drama. ... Review by Michael O ... But Reynolds/Levy isn't the most noteworthy pairing in the film, which centers on Adam Reed ...
The Adam Project
The Adam Project is a 2022 American science-fiction action comedy film directed by Shawn Levy and written by Jonathan Tropper, T. S. Nowlin, Jennifer Flackett, and Mark Levin.The movie stars Ryan Reynolds, Walker Scobell in his film debut, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Garner, Catherine Keener and Zoe Saldaña.In the film, fighter pilot Adam Reed (Reynolds) crash lands in 2022 after getting injured ...

The Adam Project

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