‘The Adam Project’ Review: Getting to Know Oneself

Yes. “The Adam Project”—funny, fast-paced and surprisingly tender—is not just about one character violating the time-space continuum. It’s about two characters discovering himself: The 12-year-old Adam ( Walker Scobell ) finds the 40-ish Adam ( Ryan Reynolds ) hiding in his late father’s office, dressed in a flight suit and nursing a bullet wound. “You were shot?!” exclaims the younger Adam, to which the older replies: “Actually, I was stabbed—with a bullet. What do you think, you moron?” Adam is hard on Adam. Who wouldn’t be, coming face to face with one’s own adolescent? But their acerbic back-and-forth is perhaps the best thing about a film that will satisfy action fans looking for comedy, comedy fans looking for action and, with a few very minor qualms, parents looking for something everyone can watch. (The young Adam is less interested in how older Adam did what he did, timewise, than how he did in college, girl-wise. But he’s 12 and the 12-year-olds on the couch will nod in agreement.)

The elder Adam, having set off from the year 2050, has landed erroneously in 2022, rather than 2018, where he had intended to save the life of his warrior wife, Laura (Zoe Saldaña). Laura seems to have been murdered by forces of Maya Sorian ( Catherine Keener ), former partner of the Adams’ father, physics professor and inventive genius Louis (Mark Ruffalo). When the movie opens, Louis is 18 months in the grave. Adam’s mother, Ellie (Jennifer Garner), is still in mourning and not exactly being comforted by her young son, who is small for his age (“I’ve seen babies bigger than me!”), has a mouth that makes him a bully magnet, and who never gives his mother a break. He’ll come to regret it.

“You have her to take care of you. She has no one—you understand?” the older Adam barks. “After 30 years you still get sick to your stomach when you think how you treated her now.” The way young Adam is brought up short by this chastisement is a sign of the film’s intelligence, young Scobell’s gifts and those of his director, Shawn Levy (“Stranger Things” and last summer’s feature “Free Guy” with Mr. Reynolds). The multiple writers could have explained why young Adam is suspended from school for having been beaten up, but there are enough solid laughs in the script that they can be forgiven a few lapses in logic. “The Adam Project” is, after all, a time-travel movie.

How all the travel is accomplished isn’t explained, but the usual wrinkles in time get smoothed out, to a degree: The two Adams can co-exist, the elder says, because when everyone returns to their “fixed place in time” all will be reconciled. And altering the past, the traditional taboo of time travelers, is the objective here: Maya used Louis’s tech to make billions and amass enormous power—when Adam scampers back to 2022, he’s pursued by a veritable air force flown by futuristic ninjas. Louis might have been a genius, but he didn’t understand how his “magnetic particle accelerator” (a.k.a. “the Adam Project”) could be used for evil purposes. Adam—and Adam—have to go back, reunite with their father and have him change the future from his fixed point in the past. It’s not so confusing, even when Laura appears out of nowhere at one point to save the collective Adam’s skin.

What’s lovely about “The Adam Project” is its treatment of grief, the love between mothers and sons and, to a slightly lesser extent, fathers and sons. A particularly moving scene involves Ellie and older Adam meeting at a bar. (Both actors are wonderful.) He knows who she is; she’s in the dark about this stranger, who’s overheard her talking about her son. While this viewer feared we were headed into “Back to the Future” territory, Mr. Reynolds’s character simply eases Ellie’s mind: Your son may be insufferable now, he says, but he really loves you. Ellie smiles. “You must have a good mom,” she says, to which he replies, “I have the best mom.” Try not choking up at that.