‘The Adam Project’: Relax, it’s just a movie

Above : Ryan Reynolds and Walker Scobell star in the Netflix feature “The Adam Project.” (Photo/Netflix)

Movie review : “The Adam Project,” directed by Shawn Levy, starring Ryan Reynolds, Walker Scobell, Jennifer Garner, Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldaña, Catherine Keener. Streaming on Netflix.

Not to sound like Captain Obvious or anything, but it really is difficult to come up with an original idea. In any event, this seems especially true in the film industry where sequels and prequels and even blatant remakes make up the majority of the product that filmmakers churn out each week.

Did you hear that Marvel has a new superhero flick, or five, coming soon? Just kidding. Of course you have.

Not that I’m complaining, you understand. Sometimes, instead of searching for something challenging – a new Christopher Nolan head-scratcher, for example, or some angst-ridden European drama – I’m totally content to watch a film that feels familiar and safe … and, yeah, comforting.

That’s one reason why I sat back the other night, tuned to Netflix and watched “The Adam Project” – despite the fact that the sci-fi comedy-thriller earned, at the time, only a 68 percent fresh rating on the critics’ website Rotten Tomatoes .

Critics: Can’t live with them but makes no sense to cancel them either.

Whatever, “The Adam Project” – directed from a team-written screenplay by Shawn Levy and starring Ryan Reynolds , Jennifer Garner, Catherine Keener, Mark Ruffalo and Zoë Saldaña – delivers just what I wanted: It doesn’t break any new ground, but it did satisfy the inner-kid in me who just wanted to spend an hour and 46 minutes escaping the world’s travails.

Reynolds stars as one half of the title character, a guy from the year 2050 who has come back to the year 2022 – mistakenly, it turns out – to fix the, well, timelime. Yes, “The Adam Project” is a time-travel tale. Adam arrives, bleeding from a gunshot wound – amping up the plot mystery – and confronts an earlier version of himself … the 12-year-old version of Adam played by newcomer Walker Scobell .

Wait, you say, is it even possible for people to meet their selves in another timeline? Hasn’t a generation of science fiction taught us that such a situation will cause some sort of temporal disruption leading to disaster? Good questions. But since we are talking about time travel, which at this point is based only on the mere slightest of theoretical possibilities, it – much like plotlines involving magic – means that pretty much anything goes.

And “The Adam Project” thrives on such equivocation. The timeline that the adult Adam wants to correct involves the misuse that a financier named Sorian (played by Keener) has done with the algorithm written by Adam’s father (played by Ruffalo) that has resulted in a 2050 world that, we’re told, resembles what James Cameron envisioned in his “Terminator” franchise .

Oh, and Adam also is looking for his wife, Laura (played by Saldaña), who disappeared earlier while on her own time-traveling assignment. In the process of completing his twin missions, with his 12-year-old self in tow, Adam is forced to face his own past traumas, some involving Dad, others involving Mom, that have made his adult existence both troubled and filled with repressed regret.

Adam meets up with his younger self, sci-fi cutely, when – on the run and wounded – he punched the wrong codes into his time-machine-slash-spaceship, landing him four years after his 2018 target date. And the heart of the film, other than the obligatory CGI-enhanced action scenes involving the posse of warriors pursuing them, is the interaction between the two Adams.

Reynolds, true to the adult character he plays, is a slightly damped down version of his typical wise-cracking self,  best displayed in the “Deadpool” films. Talented young Scobell is his match, a kid who is both amazed at what is happening yet thrilled – as any kid would be – to help save the world.

The family dynamic, along with touches of other – arguably better – films such as “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Back to the Future” and even “Field of Dreams,” make “The Adam Project” everything it needs, or even wants, to be.

That’s the best I can say. For me, on that single evening, watching it was – pun fully intended – time well spent.