Isn’t the level of danger kids in ’80s movies got to face amazing? These children on their bikes, communicating via walkie talkies and landlines, discovering massive treasure, dealing with Russian invasions, protecting aliens, holding the future of entire galaxies and timelines in their adolescent hands. To enjoy these movies, you had to throw out questions of plausibility and go along for the ride.
I opened this review talking about ’80s movies, but thankfully, this movie isn’t a period piece. The time-traveler Adam, played by Ryan Reynolds, pursued by villains led by Catherine Keener as Maya Sorian, are from 2050. Reynolds jumps back in time to team up with his adolescent self in 2021, played by Walker Scobell. Props to Scobell here, who nails playing a young Reynolds, as well as getting that ’80s kid hero feel.
I know that the nerds among us would’ve immediately doubted the premise of teaming up with your younger self. Doc Brown said that if you saw yourself it would destroy the universe. But the movie explains this away. In fact it manages to set up a lot of ideas and deploy enough of the various concepts in play for it to make “just enough” sense without going too deep in.
This is balanced out against the fact that there’s always a touch of wish fulfillment in these kinds of adventures. Going on an adventure itself is part of that, but here, we see young Adam getting to see a badass older version of himself. That’s definitely cool.
Watched yesterday, nice movie 😍