The Adam Project
Might contain spoilers.
Adequate. Whereas the writing in the first half can be excused as typical blockbuster fare, meant to be accepted and not questioned, the plot devolves into something quite silly after the halfway point. I completely understand not wanting to watch your younger self or older son die, but Maya killing the future Adam wouldn’t have mattered if he’d destroyed the drive, given that it would have wiped away that timeline entirely.
I suppose Ryan Reynolds’s been too successful with his persona to abandon it any time soon; that said, he’s comparatively restrained here, and his expressions do a lot of the work. It’s interesting just how much Mark Ruffalo resembles him in that first scene at home.
Jennifer Garner is good in a thankless role. Christos the henchman just yells and looks angry. Catherine Keener looks quite strange in her younger incarnation, which is explained by it being a deepfake.
I don’t like Walker Scobell much as the younger Adam, which I don’t think is his fault. The movie
puts words in his mouth that sound nothing like a child’s thoughts, for one thing. On the other
hand, he does get some great lines, like, Did I trade all my brains for muscles?
or, mouthed
in response to Zoe Saldaña handing him a carrot: What the f——?
.
The songs ruin the mood, particularly the upbeat track over the big fight at the accelerator, but
Adam using his lightsaber weapon to push himself off the ground is still impressive. His younger
version doing the same is even better.
Ruffalo does quite a poor job on the speech where Louis tells Adam he loves him. On a related note, how can someone punch their father? It’s not as though he’d been abusive or evil.
It disappoints me to say I missed the reference to the excellent This Is Where I Leave You .