I have a few other movie reviews in my draft with Spiderman: No Way Home being the most recent one, but I can't help from writing this one either because I like it too lol. The Adam Project while might not be the movie of the year, manages to capture my emotions and is somehow so tragically beautiful. Or I think my tolerance for bad movies just gotten higher lol
My first thought as I watched the movie was, this movie is all about parenthood. I'm not sure what other movies about time travel usually be about, but this movie is unlike any of them that I've watched. The Adam Project poses a rhetorical question, 'what would you say to your parents if you could turn back time?'
Firstly, since lots of movies nowadays begin to toy with the multiverse concept (even in this movie), I am simply going to take this movie as the canonical sequel to 13 Going 30 and I won't accept anything otherwise. Marc Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner now are happily married and they have a kid of their own, and in the first movie, Jennifer Garner time traveled 17 years to the future, while in this movie their kid time traveled from the future to the past. They're only from different genres, that's all. The first movie is rom-com this one is sci-fi.
I thought this movie is going to be somewhat whimsical, but apparently the dialogue has some thought-provoking aspects to it. My only minor complaint is some of the jokes sometimes didn't land and sometimes felt too rushed. Some of them are even cringeworthy. It was not the error on the script I think, but more on the direction and execution.
Not until I realised that the scriptwriter was my favourite author it all began to make sense. OMG if it's not the man Jonathan Tropper himself. Heck I like his book so much I put him on my blogger profile. Then I realised how strikingly similar this movie to his best seller, This Is Where I Leave You. Both started with the death of the father, where the adult son, who got separated from his wife has to come back to his childhood home and unite with his family, to console his grieving mother so that they can come to terms with their father's death. There was a disfigured character, who got his scars from an accident.
This Is Where I Leave You discusses death of a parental figure, and the needs to have a positive outlook on life after the said death, as well as forgiving and moving on.
The Adam Project central theme too, revolves around familial bond. And no wonder the dialogues can be thought provoking at times, while still maintaining its comedic edge. Jonathan Tropper is a master at that.
Some quotable quotes for me includes:
[Young Adam to Adult Adam, about being angry at their father, for being....dead]
'It's easier to be angry than to be sad'
[Louis Reed to Adam(s) Reed when they tried to warn him of his impending death]
Louis: 'You came back here because no one has a right to change the future, including us.'
Adult Adam: 'It's your future.'
Louis: 'No. You're my future.'
This was the continuation to Louis' earlier lecture where he said that after you die, the later generations will continue the life work that you started. The very next scene, where he apologizes to the adult Adam for not having the opportunity to be with him down the road, and he has to affirm many times over that he loves Adam because he knew he will die before Adam grew up and he will not get the chance to say it again after Adam left for his own timeline just broke my heart. It's just so quintessentially Tropper.
Zoe Saldana was a delight in this movie as well. She didn't have to flex that hard I mean this movie is not that deep but on that few rare scenes where she was on screen, she emoted very effectively in my opinion, especially the part where she knew she will have to die. I mean, there must be a reason top 2 highest grossing movies of all time (Avatar and Avengers: Endgame) has Zoe Saldana in it, where she got to be either blue or green.
All in all, yeah this might not be the best movie of the year but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Knowing that my favourite author is the scriptwriter is just the icing of the cake. Buuuut I really think I enjoyed this movie more due to personal reasons than technical ones, so don't get your hopes high.
P/S: Didn't Detective Pikachu a movie starring Ryan Reynolds where he had like, daddy issues too?
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