The Adam Project

Understand: In terms of moviemaking, no genre is redefined, here; no game gets changed. But the Netflix film is a relatively streamlined affair that moves at a ...

But The Adam Project, as pleasantly slight as it is, gestures toward a career trajectory the actor might enjoy in the years to come, after that jawline softens, that tight bod inevitably enDaddens itself, and his characteristic brio settles into the less effortful confidence of middle-age. It's also possible that the performance works because so much of it exists in the interplay between the two Adams — Reynolds and Scobell. In their many scenes together, Reynolds allows his familiar, keyed-up, outward persona to recede, in order to really listen to the other, younger actor, who doesn't so much steal focus as confidently accept it. Maybe it's that the script gives him more moments to breathe as an actor, as in an emotional scene he shares with Garner in a bar. He's funny in the way he usually is, he's handsome and buff and charismatic as ever. But there's a difference between choosing roles suited to your gifts and using your gifts to force roles into suiting yourself. You knew that this was just a cruel joke that he and his friends were pulling, and you had just a scosh too much self-respect to ever actually make that phone call, yet it's true that the first time you read his note, you flushed with a stupid kind of excitement, imagining for one magical instant that you'd somehow fundamentally misread the previous four miserable years of high school and okay I now realize what I'm describing may have been something less than a universal experience and more of a Me Thing so uh let me get back on track and refocus on my original thesis. No, he was the other kind of jock, the kind that wasn't looking for a career in the NFL, but only trying to gain some leadership experience and expand his extracurriculars. He went out of his way to ask to sign your yearbook at graduation, though you'd never talked to each other; when you read it later, you found that he'd left his number and invited you over to his house to swim at his pool over the summer. Again and again, he's chosen roles that highlight what comes easiest to him: Witty banter, mischievous humor, ingratiating charm. He carried himself with a confidence that he always worried might get mistaken for cockiness or swagger, so he took pains to keep in check. He was on a first-name basis with the custodian, with whom he talked car-racing; the lunch-servers snuck him extra tater tots. And why The Adam Project feels like a small but significant — and possibly even hopeful — departure for him.