Ryan Reynolds’ latest vehicle, directed by Shawn Levy, The Adam Project (2022) sees the star backing off of his sarcastic motor-mouth persona to embrace a project that is 100% nostalgia. The Adam Project, like Back To The Future (1985), is a film about fathers and sons. The Adam Project is a little loftier in its goals, setting its sights on themes of abandonment and grief rather than farce.
The Adam Project opens with The Spencer Davis Group’s immortal hit “Gimme Some Loving”, the opening theme to a dozen Vietnam War movies, as Ryan Reynolds zips through the skies in a futuristic jet à la Green Lantern (2011). But it’s no ordinary jet, it’s a time traveling jet that’s taking him back to 2022 in search of his wife Laura (Zoe Saldaña). When a 12 year old version of the Reynolds’ character (Walker Scobell) goes to investigate the emergency landing in his backyard by his middle aged self Levy intentional stages the sequence to evoke E.T. The Extra-terrestrial (1982).
These evocations equate the two iterations of the main character with archetypes established in the eighties. Reynolds is the cocky pilot in Top Gun (1986), the badass army man in Platoon (1986) and Dennis Quaid in Inner Space (1987) all rolled into one. Likewise Scobell’s version of the character is a combination of Corey Feldman in The Goonies (1985) and Elliott in E.T. Neither version of Adam ever gets to exist as a real character. They are both an amalgamations of plastic signifiers.
As much as The Adam Project may insist that it is about fathers and sons it’s really about the media consumed by fathers and sons of a specific generation; Reynolds’ generation. Nothing that Mark Ruffalo or Jennifer Garner can do in the roles of the parents can change this. In fact, even their casting is a kind of nostalgic gimmick meant to connect The Adam Project to yet another film, the charming 13 Going On 30 (2004).
This complex intertextuality has no deeper aim than the superficial spectacle; a kind of “greatest hits” if you will. The Adam Project feels like a film written from the notes of a dozen test screenings for other Ryan Reynolds movies. Even if The Adam Project had more dramatic substance it is doubtful that Reynolds could have pulled it off. Reynolds isn’t a performer anymore, he is a brand doomed to repeat itself again and again.
