Film

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I’ve been watching Ryan Reynolds in movies for decades now, going back to the Nixon comedy “Dick” (1999), but for years the guy was this hunk of Hollywood protoplasm. He’d be in a movie and it’s like I forgot what he looked like until the next movie, and so on. I just couldn’t get a bead on the guy. Then in 2016’s “Deadpool”, Reynolds found his voice – extreme sarcasm, deep pop references and quips covering a certain male self-loathing — now I know who the guy is. The trick now is to keep making good Ryan Reynolds movies like last year’s “Free Guy” and fewer movies like the thin “Hitman’s Bodyguard” series.

Number one on the Netflix charts this week is “The Adam Project” (NetflixSkydance-21 Laps, 2022, 106 min.), the second straight collaboration between Reynolds and director Shawn Levy, following “Free Guy.” (Levy and Reynolds will collaborate again on the just-announced “Deadpool 3.”)

There are four credited writers here, and I hope that when they cracked the story that they lit up cigars. “The Adam Project” is one of those movies with such a diabolically clever premise that you honestly wonder why no one’s ever done it before. It’s all about Ryan as this futuristic pilot who crash-lands in 2022 and encounters his 12-year-old self, a smartass wimpy kid with asthma named Adam (Walker Scobell). The elder Adam has been wounded and his plane has sustained damages, and he needs to lay low for a few days before he can continue his mission to find out what happened to his wife (Zoe Saldana).

Shawn Levy has a soft spot in my heart; when my mom passed away in 2011, Levy’s movie “Real Steel” was the only movie that really interested me; I was just in the right spot for a movie about robot fight clubs. Levy and Reynolds really pulled off something clever with “Free Guy,” a four-quadrant summer blockbuster that was actually clever and well-thought out, and Reynolds surrounded himself with a young, talented, versatile ensemble. Not to mention the fact that I am pathetically vulnerable to any story involving time travel.

Levy seems to have mastered the knack of making high-concept movies that work beyond the concept. We’ve seen a lot of time-travel movies and a lot of sci-fi action movies, but “The Adam Project” pulls off its own dense, somewhat bugnuts plot with a lot of enthusiastic performances that I won’t spoil, and just plain cool ideas. Both Adams have their own daddy and mommy issues to be worked on, and Reynolds definitely has some of that snarky self-loathing going on here. He can deliver a line like, “Isn’t he cute? Don’t you just want to dip his head below the water and wait for the bubbles to stop?” and not come off as nasty.

There’s a real “Guardians of the Galaxy” vibe going on here, especially with the music; the trippy action scenes are scored to needle drops like the Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin’” and Boston’s “Foreplay/Long Time.” And there must be something in the water, because Led Zeppelin are not known for licensing their songs for movies. Every once in a while, you hear some Zep in “Almost Famous” (2000) and “Dogtown and ZBoys” (2002), but just last month we heard “Ramble On” in “Uncharted” and now Levy scores a massive action set piece to the rollicking “Good Times Bad Times.”

Time travel, robots and Reynolds. Enjoy!

Recommended: “The Andy Warhol Diaries” and “Django & Django” on Netflix.

A still from “The Adam Project.” (Photo: Netflix)