Directed by Guy Ritchie — Screenplay by James Vanderbilt.
Guy Ritchie’s Fountain of Youth follows siblings Luke (played by John Krasinski) and Charlotte Purdue (played by Natalie Portman) as they eventually team up to go on an adventure to find — yep, you guessed it — the fountain of youth. While Charlotte works as a museum curator in London, Luke steals paintings to complete a job for Owen Carver (played by Domhnall Gleeson), a billionaire who is searching for the fountain of youth to prevent his own death from a terminal illness. Luke and Charlotte’s paths cross when he steals a painting from the museum where she works, resulting in her losing her job. When one thing leads to another, she reluctantly joins their mission, while Interpol, as well as a secret society dedicated to protecting the fountain, is chasing them.
This has so many of the necessary ingredients to make up an action-adventure film in the mold of Indiana Jones, as it contains competent stars, globetrotting, mythical concepts, and treasure-hunting. The costume designer even dressed Krasinski in clothes and color patterns that are fairly similar to those of PlayStation action-adventure hero Nathan Drake, who Tom Holland played in Ruben Fleischer’s Uncharted from 2022. As a major fan of both the Uncharted games and the Indiana Jones films (yes, including the latest film, Dial of Destiny, which I think is pretty underrated), this Apple TV+ film, with a reported budget of around $180 million, should be right up my alley. Unfortunately, I found this to be shockingly dull and ineffective.
Before I get on with what really drags this film down, though, I do want to highlight the positive elements that the film includes. Mainly, I think the film looks quite good. Often, films trying to imitate the feel of another film struggle to get close to reaching the visual artistry of said film, but here, cinematographer Ed Wild and director Guy Ritchie succeed in creating a perfectly decent look for this type of film. Indeed, it makes for a decent audition for Ritchie if he were interested in doing Uncharted 2, as it is both visually pleasing and features fairly decent action, including an opening chase scene. I also think the set piece built around the Lusitania is executed quite well. But that’s maybe also where my list of positives ends, as simply having the right ingredients (or cast) isn’t enough if the ingredients don’t ultimately pay off.
There’s something off about the auditory experience of this film. I found myself jonesing for some kind of catchy musical theme to kick in, but, unlike Indiana Jones or Uncharted, it doesn’t really have any that is particularly noteworthy. It makes for a fairly empty musical experience, which feels at odds with the subgenre that it is trying to fit into. More concerning, however, are the film’s deep writing issues. The film is littered with the kind of exposition that feels so inorganic that you stub your toe on it. The back and forth between Portman and Krasinski is often especially troublesome, as it feels like the film was written to ensure you’d be able to catch up on the plot and character dynamics no matter when people who are only half-watching felt the desire to look up from their phones. When characters who are supposed to be siblings talk to each other in a way as if they have to be reminded of their life stories and relationships, then you know you’ve got a dialogue problem.
I also think the film has problems in between set pieces, as there is a lack of urgency and forward momentum here that often makes the film lethargic. It’s roughly two hours long, but it feels at least half an hour longer than it is. I also think it fails in fairly essential areas, including the performances. While the film has a pretty strong cast that also includes Eiza Gonzalez, Carmen Ejogo, Arian Moayed, and Stanley Tucci, the performances in this film, including the leads, leave a lot to be desired. Ejogo barely has anything to work with as her character is so thinly drawn, Tucci’s appearance is of the blink and you’ll miss it variety, and Gonzalez doesn’t have good enough chemistry with Krasinski to sell their will-they-won’t-they dynamic. It feels forced. Portman is one of my favorite actors of her generation, but there isn’t much effort put into making her character work as more than just a generic sister character unhappy with her situation. It’s a shame, as I think the brother-sister dynamic had potential for this kind of film. Then there’s Krasinski, whose take on an action-adventure hero feels inappropriately pleased with himself in Fountain of Youth. Here, he feels particularly miscast, as he can’t quite pull off his character’s smug, know-it-all criminal attitude as anything other than unlikable. I will say that the writing doesn’t do him any favors, but, then again, Krasinski, who I normally really enjoy, fails to make his character work as a protagonist.
So, while it looks fairly good and features both competent actors in front of the camera and filmmakers behind it, Fountain of Youth is a sloppily written and derivative action-adventure film with central performances that miss the mark by quite a lot. As someone who normally really enjoys this subgenre of films (and who tends to have a pretty good time with Guy Ritchie films), I have to say that this is a pretty significant disappointment to me.
4 out of 10
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 