It is difficult to fault ‘The Adam Project’: it is a piece of inconsequential but successful entertainment. Its cast is very appropriate, it is full of set pieces of well-executed action, and fits perfectly with the equation for the successful blockbuster that Netflix has been planning since last yearwhen he decided to release less but reinforce each of those premieres with a budget and internationally famous performers.
The results have been uneven, ever since those early days with ‘Bright’. ‘Project Power’ was not a big deal, and ‘Uncovered’ was a downright weak movie. There have been bets on interesting creative results (Michael Bay’s fantastic ‘6 in the Shadows’) that have not found their audience, others that did not seem to attract attention, such as ‘The Old Guard’, but that apparently did work because Netflix He is already preparing sequels, and the great success of this entire platform project to compete with Hollywood: ‘Red Alert’, the most watched movie in its history.
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But they all share a curious spirit of exploit of other people’s successes, not very brazen but not overflowing with originality either, and where sometimes they bet on investing a good part of the budget in the cast, while skimping on luxuries that Marvel or Warner blockbusters are allowed. For example, the excesses in the special effects, the variety of scenarios and the muscular narrative, with mammoth footage and myriads of secondary characters.
Sometimes this tactic works better for Netflix, as we said above, and sometimes worse. In ‘6 en la sombra’ the result was a film with few set-pieces but very well cared for, which gave it a touch of a small but very special action movie. The same with ‘The old guard’, where there were no grandiloquent excesses typical of superhero movies, but there were a few bitter reflections on the genre. ‘The Adam Project’ belongs to this latest trend: its diminutiveness in conception and execution suits it very well.
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Jedi of the future past
The style of ‘The Adam Project’ also drinks from a reference, the family adventure, comedy and action movies of the eighties. Spielberg’s productions for Amblin are the clear reference for this film, in which there are also traces of classics such as ‘The Flight of the Navigator’ or ‘Starfighter: The Adventure Begins’, as well as, of course, the most obvious reference: ‘ Return to the future’. But ‘The Adam Project’ pecks at everything with healthy shamelessness and easily forms its own personality.
The film tells how a pilot from the year 2050 (Ryan Reynolds) lands in the present and meets his childhood self, a kid from 2012 (Walker Scobell). His mission: locate the first’s partner, a pilot who is also a time traveler (Zoe Saldaña). The plot will be complicated by the appearance of the father of both versions of the same person (Mark Ruffalo). A conflict that is resolved as good family adventure movies do: happily.
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Although the adventure has pieces of considerable emotional charge (Mark Ruffalo’s character, for example, has died at both ages of the protagonist and was never a particularly attentive father with his son, which turned him into a somewhat surly and conflictive boy) It is admirable that Shaun Levy has his priorities straight. the action scenes, completely devoid of violence, they work thanks to the extraordinary chemistry of the trio of male leadsand they are shot with taste and a total lack of prejudice that allows for the introduction of elements such as jets from the future and Jedi sabers on steroids.
‘The Adam Project’ is, like so many Netflix blockbusters, a film without great ambitions but that gives an hour and a half of fun without complications what promises Science-fiction with not too much science, very well resolved time paradoxes, humor with quick and sharp dialogues and a great cast make up a film that is as enjoyable as it is inconsequential. Which is what good commercial cinema was about, right?
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The news
‘The Adam Project’ continues to define the Netflix blockbuster: cheap, successful and full of famous faces
was originally published in
Xataka
by John Tones.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism