Twelve year-old Adam (Walker Scobell) is not adjusting well after the death of his father Louis (Mark Ruffalo), and is acting out at school and at home, despite the efforts of his mother Ellie (Jennifer Garner). One day he stumbles across a time traveler from the year 2050. It's an adult Adam (Ryan Reynolds), searching for his missing wife Laura (Zoe Saldana), and on the run from the evil Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener), the mogul who controls time travel in 2050. The two versions of Adam need to team up in order to survive, but they don't get along very well.
"The Adam Project" reminds me a lot of a previous Shawn Levy film, "Real Steel." That was a science fiction story featuring a young boy and his father who were constantly being assholes to each other. I didn't like it much. "The Adam Project" has a similar adult/child dynamic, but handles it considerably better. While there's a lot of snarky quipping being thrown around, it's clear from the outset that the angry kid and his struggling parental figures all love each other dearly. Also, we know exactly why there's so much kid/adult friction, because the kid and the adult are the same person - Ryan Reynolds. And we're all familiar enough with Reynolds' screen persona by this point that we know not to take the insults too seriously.
This is pretty obviously a Reynolds vehicle, despite the family friendly packaging. Both versions of Adam are completely built around him, and Scobell was clearly cast for his ability to exude the same kind of self-aware cockiness. I wish that the time travel adventure was more interesting, but the film is more interested in the family and grief therapy angle, that's just fine. As an action spectacle, it's pretty low key. There are lightsabers-esque weapons and other gadgets to play with, a cool airship to fly, and lots of bad CGI all around. Deaging technology is still a menace in the wrong hands, and these are the wrong hands. Still, a wholly original science fiction film aimed at kids and parents is a relative rarity these days, this is a perfectly fine watch if you just want some action and banter.
Now, for "Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes," a very low budget Japanese time travel comedy that's just bursting with inventiveness and exuberance. It's designed to look like a single shot following a man named Kato (Kazunari Tosa), as he discovers that the video screen in his bedroom shows images recorded from the screen in the cafe downstairs - but two minutes in the future. Soon his friends have gotten involved, there are mobsters and mysterious strangers lurking around, and things quickly get out of hand. The feature only runs 70 minutes, but it's a very fun ride to see what's going to pop up on the video screens next, and how the situation keeps escalating.
The tone is very broad and lighthearted. Characters act much younger than they are and tend to speak in gleeful exclamations. It's nice to see one of these time-twister stories that doesn't end in horrible betrayals and murder, but the antics of Kato and friends are very, very silly stuff. This sometimes undercuts how impressive the film is on a technical and narrative level. Once you start thinking about how the filmmakers managed to actually make the film, it quickly becomes clear how much of the action had to be carefully timed and orchestrated to play out in two-minute chunks. Actors react to themselves onscreen in the future, in segments that haven't been shot yet. Actors react to themselves reacting to themselves in segments that haven't been shot yet. It's pretty wild.
Directed by first timer Junta Yamaguchi and written by Makoto Ueda - familiar to anime fans for his work on "Tatami Galaxy" and other similarly mind-bendy shows - "Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes" is very much a gimmick film. However, the execution is great, and the movie doesn't outstay its welcome. This is destined to become a cult film and will inevitably be remade with a much larger budget and a fraction of the charm. I suggest tracking this down and checking it out before that happens.
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