The Adam Project

BY AUDREY MORALES, STAFF WRITER

The action sci-fi movie, “The Adam Project,” follows a 12-year-old boy named Adam Reed, who is grieving the loss of his father. Ryan Reynolds plays the older version of Adam, who is now a pilot and comes back from the future to try to save his wife, Laura (played by Zoe Saldana). 

There are twists and turns in this film where two versions of Adam Reed, both young and middle-aged, eventually do find his wife, but she tells them they must go back further in time to try to fix the timeline since Maya (played by Catharine Keener) already messed it up for her benefit.  

There is this CGI of young Maya, and it took me out of the film because it was a little creepy looking, but in the later scenes, it was more realistic.

Fourth Estate / Billy Ferguson

Towards the beginning of the film, there is a scene where Maya’s soldiers have both Adams surrounded and are rescued by Laura. This part was confusing because the futuristic ship that has guns and surrounds them suddenly leaves–no reason or explanation, just leaves–giving a chance for Laura and both Adams to escape in a car, until the ship finds them again and starts to follow and shoot at them. 

It could be this was intentional to move the film along, and screenwriters couldn’t think of a reason for the ship to suddenly leave, but it ended up being a plot hole for me. 

Walker Scobell, who plays young Adam, was fantastic in his role. He has the same joking and fast-paced banter as Reynolds, and they worked well off each other.

Mark Ruffalo plays the father, Louis. When both Adams go back in time, they find Louis and try to convince him to destroy the time machine formula. Louis resists and wants nothing to do with messing the timeline, but eventually comes around and tries to help his son. 

For the “13 Going on 30” fans, it was nostalgic to see Ruffalo and Garner return to the screen together and play romantic interests again. They both have amazing chemistry.

At the end, when Louis tries to destroy the formula, it is inside a magnetic particle accelerator, but during the fighting, the reactor overloads and is going to explode while the magnetism sucks everything metal towards it. This provides some comic relief and some tension. 

Another issue in this film was when the particle accelerator is going berserk, both Adams are fighting the soldiers and Louis is trying to stop the reactor, both young and older Maya just hide. They don’t try to fight them or leave, they just hide. 

It felt off, as villains of a story usually try to escape or fight in a tense situation, very rarely do they just hide until the end. 

Towards the end of the climax, when the Adams win and Louis can’t fix the reactor, the Mayas come out and try to stop them. A little late, don’t you think? The older Maya tries to pressure young Maya to shoot Louis, but she can’t, so older Maya takes the gun away from her and shoots Louis.

At this moment, the bullet is going towards Louis and starts to turn toward the accelerator. Who is in the path of the bullet now? Young Maya. Older Maya killed young Maya. That scene did not leave me satisfied; I wanted more conclusions for Maya’s story than her just accidentally killing her younger self. Felt safe and too easy of a fix in my opinion.

At the end of the film though, there is an emotional scene where Louis infers he knows he will die soon. “You’re my boys, and you’ll always be my boys,” 

A scene-stealer for sure, Ruffalo takes the cake. That scene was a great closure for all of the character’s developments. This sweet moment was followed by a scene where the Adams and Louis play catch. 

This movie overall was a good adventure if you like time travel, comedy, and action sequences. Just be aware of some lacking plot points, but the acting of the cast was outstanding.