As an action movie it's ok. As a time travel movie it's sloppy. As a fathers-and-sons movie it's lazy.
Fighter pilot Adam Reed travels back in time to follow his missing fighter pilot wife on her own time travel mission. He misses the target by a few years and has to tap his own childhood self to circumvent the vehicle's lockout. The two are off to unravel the time stream dodging time travel goons all the way.
The first problem is the characterization and dialogue. Old Adam is a jerk to his own past self for most of their interactions because it's funny to quip at the kid. He has clear objectives but refuses to lay them out for his ally, instead dropping breadcrumbs at intervals so the plot can slowly unfold. Young Adam is a jerk to everyone around him in his own time but not to his future self because he has to provide emotional intelligence in a key scene. Their mother Ellie is given nothing to do despite being an obvious potential ally. Their father is shown as emotionally intuitive while also being a consummate academic and disengaged parent. These are all problems in forcing jokes and tropes on characters that don't justify them.
The second problem is that time travel tropes are well established and this movie can't make any decisions about them. Either time travel can change the past or it can't; The Adam Projecttakes place in a timeline that has already been altered but the characters won't shut up about how any other change to the timeline would be bad. Either time travel has strong rules about how it works or the characters don't bother trying to explain; The Adam Project has different characters confidently launching different explanations that don't hang together with each other or the visible plot. The movie keeps jumping to the next action scene so the audience doesn't have to think about it.
The final problem is with the emotional core of the movie: Adam's relationship to his father Louis. Young and old Adam bond over the loss of their father who died before the movie began. As with so many father-and-son movies they are built at the expense of the female characters. Ellie is nothing but a support for her absentee husband and abusive young son. She gets only a few scenes but only as an object for the male characters' development to bounce off. Adam's wife Laura uses her few scenes with Adam to showcase what a good match they make before sacrificing herself in a not-particularly- effective fight. She is not even mentioned by the male characters when they travel back farther and could have recruited her past self because she would have pulled focus off Adam and Louis working out the climax. The father-and-son development is held up as the true theme of the whole movie but it's resolved entirely between the two Adams, and Louis is placed on a pedestal rather than having to make any changes. The depiction is of parents that are already perfect and the flaws in the relationship are the child's responsibility to fix.
It's a fine movie to watch Ryan Reynolds crack jokes, Jennifer Garner channel warmth, Zoe Saldana kick ass, and Mark Ruffalo be academic. None of their characters matter. Don't plan on a rewatch.
Film Drivel
As an action movie it's ok. As a time travel movie it's sloppy. As a fathers-and-sons movie it's lazy.
Fighter pilot Adam Reed travels back in time to follow his missing fighter pilot wife on her own time travel mission. He misses the target by a few years and has to tap his own childhood self to circumvent the vehicle's lockout. The two are off to unravel the time stream dodging time travel goons all the way.
The first problem is the characterization and dialogue. Old Adam is a jerk to his own past self for most of their interactions because it's funny to quip at the kid. He has clear objectives but refuses to lay them out for his ally, instead dropping breadcrumbs at intervals so the plot can slowly unfold. Young Adam is a jerk to everyone around him in his own time but not to his future self because he has to provide emotional intelligence in a key scene. Their mother Ellie is given nothing to do despite being an obvious potential ally. Their father is shown as emotionally intuitive while also being a consummate academic and disengaged parent. These are all problems in forcing jokes and tropes on characters that don't justify them.
The second problem is that time travel tropes are well established and this movie can't make any decisions about them. Either time travel can change the past or it can't; The Adam Project takes place in a timeline that has already been altered but the characters won't shut up about how any other change to the timeline would be bad. Either time travel has strong rules about how it works or the characters don't bother trying to explain; The Adam Project has different characters confidently launching different explanations that don't hang together with each other or the visible plot. The movie keeps jumping to the next action scene so the audience doesn't have to think about it.
The final problem is with the emotional core of the movie: Adam's relationship to his father Louis. Young and old Adam bond over the loss of their father who died before the movie began. As with so many father-and-son movies they are built at the expense of the female characters. Ellie is nothing but a support for her absentee husband and abusive young son. She gets only a few scenes but only as an object for the male characters' development to bounce off. Adam's wife Laura uses her few scenes with Adam to showcase what a good match they make before sacrificing herself in a not-particularly- effective fight. She is not even mentioned by the male characters when they travel back farther and could have recruited her past self because she would have pulled focus off Adam and Louis working out the climax. The father-and-son development is held up as the true theme of the whole movie but it's resolved entirely between the two Adams, and Louis is placed on a pedestal rather than having to make any changes. The depiction is of parents that are already perfect and the flaws in the relationship are the child's responsibility to fix.
It's a fine movie to watch Ryan Reynolds crack jokes, Jennifer Garner channel warmth, Zoe Saldana kick ass, and Mark Ruffalo be academic. None of their characters matter. Don't plan on a rewatch.