The Adam Project is one of the great new movies that Netflix is releasing all throughout this year. A lineup of amazing films specifically designed to show value in the service, and produce content for their users.
Advertised as an action and sci-fi film dealing with time travel, the movie is so much more. As we jump into this review, I can’t protect you completely from spoilers, but we will do our best to not ruin the surprises as we cover this film. As always our primary topics are story, acting, and overall.
Story 9/10
The basic synopsis of this film, is a man in an effort to save someone he cares about, travels to the past and finds himself having to enlist the aid of his much younger self. Anything more would definitely be spoilers. But I’m sure we’ll let a couple slip as we delve further.
As far as stories go about time travel, this film bumps into a territory a lot of other films have covered. It deals with this by making jokes about those other films and not taking itself, and the rules of time travel, too seriously. While the situation of not taking itself too seriously is a definite benefit, any friends of hard sci-fi might find themselves frustrated with how nonchalantly they shrug off any real discussions about time travel. Even when they introduce a scientist to talk about the background technology, it’s almost like the film yells out, “Shut up nerd.”
I will say that while this film has far too many fart jokes, I mean any amount of fart jokes is too many these days, there is a surprisingly deep story underneath all of the action. At its heart this film is about grief and the long term effects of not addressing the trauma it causes. From acting out and misplaced anger all the way through self resentment for one’s actions caused by deep sorrow.
This movie has so much heart, as the main character(s) come to terms with their grief, both being at different places in their lives, and how it’s affected them.
Acting 7/10
I have to give so much acclaim to Jennifer Garner, who plays Ellie Reed, the tormented mother who is just trying to keep a strong face for her child, as she suffers through his anger, not able to actually grieve for her lost husband. While she doesn’t get as much screen time as I think she deserves, her performance in the movie starts off the strong emotional journey.
Walker Scobell who plays young Adam Reed, does an amazing job in his performance for this film. From not only stealing the show from Ryan Reynolds, but also in his aping of Reynolds style from even his other films, it feels like a master class in stylized mimicry.
The rest of the cast in the form of Ryan Reynolds, Alex Mallari Jr., Mark Ruffalo, and Zoe Saldaña are great. They do such a great job imbuing the story with heart, that you forget that it’s an action sci-fi, and get lost in the emotional journey of the characters.
Overall 8.5/10
Overall this movie is a lot of fun, it’s great for the whole family. It’s a touching deep dive into grief and teenage angst in a fun and engaging form.
I will say that the graphics and choreography of the fight scenes is impressive, but I have to give credit to NNS’ good friend Aaron from But Why Tho Podcast for pointing out to me a great bit of detail, you can find his review Here. As he noticed the one failing in the graphics department was the de-aging of Catherine Keener’s character. In the past when making movies with flashbacks or time travel, studios usually would hire someone who is younger, age him up with makeup, or would find a different actor that looked similar to a younger version of them for scenes. Now though, with the increase of technology like de-aging and deep fakes becoming the norm, industries regularly just turn to those options.
Unfortunately those graphical works can be off putting, and unfortunately it’s not different in this film.
Conner’s Final thoughts
I found it interesting that all the main actors in this film, Walker Scobell who plays young Adam excluded, have starred in films where Time Travel was a relatively big plot point.
Clearly Mark Ruffalo and Zoe Saldaña from Avengers Endgame, Ryan Reynolds from Deadpool 2, and Catherine Keener from Hamlet 2. Yeah look it up, it’s a major plot point of the story of the play Steve Coogan writes in the movie.
This factor allowed them to specifically make a joke at the expense of Endgame, where Reynolds tells Scobell that he watches too many movies when he references the rules for time travel from the MCU.
It was funny.
If you want to watch the new film “The Adam Project” make sure to head to Netflix tomorrow!
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