This movie feels like Shawn Levy and Ryan Reynolds had such a great time working together on Free Guy they resolved to do so again, and their first look deal with Netflix was running out so they just picked this one off the top of the slush pile and saw that it had a bunch of VFX and quippy, Ryan Reynolds-ey humour.

Apparently it had been in development since 2012 with Tom Cruise billed to star at one point, so maybe they figured they could get it into production quick without too much more extra development.

Reynolds actually tones it down a little bit, and there are some moments of genuine emotion even though it seems he can't completely stop winking at the audience any more than he can stop breathing.

But it's the only surprise here. Everything else is very predictable, corporate and kind of soulless, with an overcooked and very big studio feel to it and no real creative fingerprint.

Reynolds is Adam, a pilot in a high tech plane some time in the future, apparently having stolen it to return to the past (our present), succeeding in doing so in the nick of time but getting himself injured in the resulting crash.

Meanwhile his 12 year old self (Walker Scobell) is having a hard time at home following the death of his father the year before, getting into fights at school and making life even worse for his mother (Jennifer Garner), who's still trying to grieve but is trying to do the best for her son and move on with her own life.

Adam crash lands near his past self's house and holes up there, realising he needs the kid to re-enter the jet and make repairs because they have the same DNA. His mission is to save his wife Laura (Zoe Saldana), who came back to the present and never returned, so when he reluctantly reveals himself to his younger self to get back in the jet and prepare to move on, they're both attacked by the film's big bad Sorian (a very miscast Katherine Keener), Adam's dead father's former business partner.

The race is on to go back further in time and find and recruit Adam's Dad (Mark Ruffalo) to the cause because it turns out he invented time travel with Sorian, find Laura and reconcile the various abandonment issues. If you care enough about the rest of the story and the people in it you might find the energy to try and keep up with the time-bending narrative, but I didn't.

The laughs aren't side splitting, the action isn't breakneck and the sci-fi isn't groundbreaking, and even though it's one of those films that has everything in the right place and everything's done at mostly the right register (from the performances to the VFX) there's just a complete void where there should be some soul or spirit to it all.