Review of 'The Adam Project'

Just saw the The Adam Project last night, a pretty good time-travel movie on Netflix. Here's a pretty much non-spoiler review:

Adam from the future travels back to 2022, meets his younger, 12-year old self, and enlists him (his younger self) in preventing their father, Louis, from inventing time travel. If you think that set-up invokes all kinds of time-travel paradoxes -- starting with wouldn't his younger self remember all of this, and wouldn't that create a distortive loop that would upend his life -- you'd be right.

I've found you can pretty much divide time travel stories into those that respect and attempt to deal with these kinds of paradoxes, and those that don't. 12 Monkeys, the 1995 movie, would be an example of among the best attempts to deal with the paradoxes, as would Déjà vu in 2006. I usually don't waste time critiquing turkeys of movies and TV shows, so I won't mention the far greater number that ignore or don't bother to pay much attention to the paradoxes.

I said The Adam Project was pretty good, because it at least acknowledged some of the paradoxes. But its solutions were just hand-waving -- saying if a character disturbed time in such and such a way, it would be ok because -- and didn't really supply an explanation. The net result: it was enjoyable as time travel movie, but not great, and its real strengths reside elsewhere.

Those would be in the family story, buttressed by two very talented stars -- Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner -- who act great together and play Adam's father and mother. Walker Scobell as young Adam was also quite good, and Ryan Reynolds as adult Adam was ok (Tom Cruise was originally supposed to play the part, back when the movie was first conceived in 2012). All of this added up to the sacrifices made by Louis being meaningful and even memorable.

So ... if you're devotee of time travel, as I am, see the movie. You'll enjoy it, even if you're not rewarded with brilliant renditions of the paradoxes.