The Stream: Not much to hate on here

The Big Screen: Great cast chemistry, comedy, action, and storylines

The Final Bill: All-around solid streaming movie with a great cast

– S2S: Movie Review
Director: Shawn Levy
Writers: Jonathan Tropper, T.S. Nowlin, Jennifer Flackett
Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Walker Scobell, Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana, Jennifer Garner
Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hour 40 minutes
Production Companies: 21 Laps Entertainment, Maximum Effort, Skydance Media
Platform: Netflix released March 11, 2022

Streamers, time travel and movies just seem to be the thing. It feels like a new movie every week deals with time travel. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy this type of Sci-Fi flick but come on! Anyway, this week Netflix released The Adam Project. This movie follows a time-traveling pilot as he’s forced to team up with his younger self and his late father to come to terms with his past while saving the future. Days of my future’s past type of mind meld. If I go back and talk to my past self, does my past become my future’s future or my past’s future’s past?! Oh no, I’ve gone cross-eyed. Well, let’s see how it turns out.

The time travel element of this film isn’t as important and I’m kind of glad they just skim over that. My brain is still triggered from the End Game explanation and traumatized from Tenet. More importantly, the time element really creates nice storylines for the characters. Ryan Reynolds and the kid have a really good rapport. Actually, the whole cast had pretty great chemistry overall, which made the movie easy to watch. What also made the movie easy to watch is the dialed back Ryan Reynolds free-for-all, banter comedy. Over the last 7 years, my guy has gone over the top with the first-thing-off-the-top-of-my-head type comedy in Deadpool and then a different direction with the Hitman’s Bodyguard stuff. While it can be funny at times, it’s just over the top and a bit annoying. Here, while the writing still has that element, it’s definitely dialed back for the younger actor and it’s appreciated. They found a way to be funny without being over the top or too crass. On a different note, the movie also allowed for the action and storyline to actually be front in center. We had the time travel. We had the hunt for love. We had the redemption story. All of these threads had their moment and were compelling. I’m susceptible to a redeeming-father story but this one with Mark Ruffalo felt really good. Similarly, the chemistry between Reynolds and Saldana also felt really great. The filmmakers of this movie really took care with this production. Even though this wasn’t primarily and action flick, the fight scenes were actually pretty awesome. The only knock there is there wasn’t enough of the hand to hand combat sequences.

With that said, The Adam Project was a really nice and fresh streaming movie. The cast, writing, and action sequences were done really well. Though this didn’t come out in theaters, I wouldn’t have been mad if it did. The Adam Project is a film the whole family/anyone can enjoy with a big box of popcorn.