Shawn Levy’s The Adam Project (C+) starts with a pretty lively premise – suppose you time traveled for an adventure with your younger self – and spends most of its duration squandering its novel notion. Ryan Reynolds delivers his typical brashness with grumpy quips, with pint-sized Walker Scobell as his tween self a little too intermittently sarcastic and wide-eyed to collect much goodwill. Zoe Saldaña is sufficiently emotive as a love interest and gets a few moments to strut her action chops. Catherine Keener is woefully miscast as an arbitrary villain. Mark Ruffalo doesn’t get much to do as the protagonist’s dad, and Jennifer Garner barely registers as the mom. The special effects are subpar and most of the action sequences shoehorned and cribbed from better properties. A couple of emotional sequences almost redeem the rote reels, but this movie is little more than a perfectly average and uninspiring way to spend two hours.