The Adam Project, the Ryan Reynolds we like
The Adam Project
Debuting on Friday, but already number one on Netflix's most viewed charts, The Adam Project is a sci-fi film by Free Guy's Shawn Levy focusing on time travel and… the rampant personality of Ryan Reynolds. As a 2050 weather agent named Adam Reed, Reynolds escapes a dystopian future to correct the present. He takes refuge in 2022, running into his 12-year-old version: while he's athletic and assertive, young Adam is puny, shy and bullied. Together, they will carry out a mission to change the fate of humanity by changing the past. The Adam Project, despite the time travel theme, falls into the soft sci-fi category because although it includes a good deal of action and narrative gimmicks of the genre, especially in the second part of the narrative, it focuses much more on the relationship between the protagonists and their family with an intimate approach.Content This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
The premise is as follows: what would you give to go back in time and see a lost loved one again, or to reassure your young self by telling him that everything will be fine and the future will be bright (even if it is not true ), thus lifting it from that boulder that is pre-adolescence? Much of the story explores delicate issues such as mourning, filial love, the difficulty of growing up and finding a place in the world. Adam meets his twelve-year-old alter ego when he is already forty-four: he is a middle-aged man who has survived painful experiences, remorse, regret, anger. Seeing himself in the naive and innocent version of him takes an unexpected turn, because this Adam is wiser, more mature and more alert than him. The Adam Project reminds us of what we have lost through pain and bitterness: not just innocence, but the clarity that informed our judgment before personal experiences corrupted it.
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More than a thundering science fiction action, The Adam Project is a tale with an intimate and nostalgic tone. The risk of a saccharine drift is averted by the inevitable talkative irony of Ryan Reynolds (who also here basically plays himself), less exasperating than usual (it is appropriate to evoke Red Notice). His mocking and cynical jokes are never exaggerated and above all they pose as the ideal antidote to the dose of saccharin that the interaction between the unfortunate boy and his future angry and disappointed self could lend itself to. Much of the credit for this flawless balance goes to Reynolds and to the harmony he manages to achieve with Walker Scobell, interpreter of the twelve-year-old Adam: their comic timing is infallible, their alchemy is natural, their gestures are in sync; together they embody the sense of fracture and at the same time of continuity between their respective personalities. The rest of the cast, recycled from the Marvel stables - including Zoe Saldaña, Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner - serves as an appeal to the public by lending itself to supporting roles with grace and restraint.
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The engulfed family dimension of the science fiction one conveyed in a spurious and slender plot about the villain of the future to be defeated in the past to bring the timeline back on the right track. The plot makes use of the rules adopted by science fiction literature dedicated to time travel - never interfere with history, never meet oneself from the past - and then challenge them. The Adam Project cites Terminator and Back to the Future (and Star Wars, to remind us that every kid's childhood dream is a real lightsaber), mentions temporal paradoxes and fixed points in time (the pivotal events of the story that determine the course) and in doing so exhibits the minimum wage to re-enter the genre of Sf. The narrative of the second part, more eventful, also works thanks to some cute special effects (apart from the creepy rejuvenation of Catherine Keener), but of this film we will remember the heartening tenderness of the confrontation between the two Adams.
