‘The Adam Project’ Review: Ryan Reynolds Meets His 12-Year-Old Self in Shawn Levy’s Back-to-the-Future Action Confection

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticSomewhere along the line, Ryan Reynolds became the most playful actor we have. That might sound like faint praise; some would call him silly or lightweight or even, in his aggro irreverance, a touch smarmy.

But genuine fast-break insolence is a quality that’s missing from the lumbering cheek of most of our paint-by-numbers blockbusters.

Reynolds has a knack for playing characters who are nonchalantly macho but with an amusing touch of cowardice, a contradiction he invests with a kind of innocence.

He’s got a Nervous Nellie side that humanizes him, especially when it takes the form of a nerd’s verbal machine-gun fire. In his way, he’s a new screen type: the goof in a pinup’s body.Last summer, in the diabolically clever video-game head trip “Free Guy,” Reynolds finally got to be in a movie where the jittery digital-age fantasy elements skittered by every bit as quickly as his rapid-patter mind.