The Adam Project
NETFLIXWrexham F.C. co-owner and “funny man” Ryan Reynolds returns to the screen in The Adam Project. That screen is, thankfully, not the big one that costs cold, hard cash to gain entry to, but the comfort of the living room and the Netflix ransom. Pay up. It’s time for another ride on the action-comedy merry-go-round. Not so merry anymore. Future bound pilot Adam Reed (Reynolds) has accidentally crash-landed in 2022 and must rely on an ensemble of Marvel alumni to fire him back to wherever he came from. Shawn Levy churns out another project from the directing chair and considering the close proximity Free Guy and The Adam Project have with one another, this Netflix-original could just be an afterthought conjured up by Reynolds and Levy on the set of another collaboration.
Expectedly choppy that strain of thought that may be, The Adam Project shows signs of being a completely irrelevant piece of entertainment. It is a film that cannot trust its audience. Everything is spelt out. Absolutely anything that happens is shown to the letter in both how it is done, why it happens and what it means for the character at the core of this. Reed is the usual bearded hero, one where Chris Pratt could have slipped right in and nobody would’ve batted an eyelid. Reynolds is fine once again. His consistency as a leading man is matched only by his inconsistency as a funny character. Fine enough, it is up to the supporting cast to pick up the pieces. Not that they care to do so. Out of everyone, newcomer Walker Scobell shines through as an extraordinary talent. He is offered up his fair share of comic lines and decent setpieces that see him brush shoulders with Reynolds and company.
A shining star for the CV this one is; The Adam Project is a collection of recognisable faces, safely timed action and dribbling one-liners that do nothing for the story and even less for those that will have heard them time and time again. Eventually, the word “genre” is meaningless. Everything is the same, or so The Adam Project would have you believe. It’s just all those time travel movies with the jumpy energy they bring but without any of the heart found in Back to the Future or smart forward planning witnessed in Looper. What’s the point? The Adam Project is a pointless vehicle for Reynolds to do absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, and even less for the likes of Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Garner, and Zoe Saldana to do.
Between this and Red Notice, Reynolds has clearly struck quite the deal with Netflix. It is a shame he cannot strike up a run of quality films. With this, The Croods: A New Age, Free Guy, 6 Underground and Detective Pikachu, it has been a messy half-decade for Reynolds. An expressionless and barren feature that relies on relatively tame sci-fi tropes and not much else. What more can be expected from a film cut and paste from the remnants of other, failed projects? Another feature for the worryingly large pile of dross to release in 2022. Keep it coming. Someone will snap eventually. It’ll not be Netflix, though.