Fountain of Youth

by Finnlay Dall

Year:  2025

Director:  Guy Ritchie

Release:  Streaming Now

Distributor: Apple TV+

Running time: 125 minutes

Worth: $12.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth

Cast:
John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Eiza González, Domhnall Gleeson

Intro:
At its best, Fountain of Youth makes one happy to be a Guy Ritchie fan, its large and bombastic action set-pieces offering an exhilarating adventure in their own right.

It seems like everyone’s on a quest to revive a long dead genre: the ‘capital A’ Adventure Blockbuster. With adaptations like Disney’s Jungle Cruise or Sony’s Uncharted – based on their successful game franchise of the same name – or Paramount’s (presented by) The Lost City following soon after, it’s a wonder why anyone is still trying. When MachineGames can make a far better Indiana Jones sequel in The Great Circle than even Disney, why would they, or indeed Apple, continue to embarrass themselves? Yet, with action veteran Guy Ritchie at the helm, is Fountain of Youth an archaeological adventure finally worth getting excited about…?

…Unfortunately, no. But the film is leagues (30,000 to be exact) better than any of the current ventures that Hollywood has made thus far.

When our archaeologist Luke Purdue (John Krasinski) rips his way down the gravelly streets of Bangkok protecting the priceless painting strapped to his back – Thai druglords hot on his heels – for a moment, you can’t help but get excited. With vehicles swerving and drifting through city markets and bikes crashing through hotel rooms – all underscored by a playful Thai rendition of Bang Bang – Ritchie’s fingerprints are all over this film from frame one.

And when it comes to action set-pieces, the director hasn’t lost his touch, gunfights and close quarter combat are filmed with his usual swan-like precision. Cameras find themselves weaving under sucker punches or jumping over sweeping kicks. The best fight choreography by far is no doubt handed to Luke’s assassin/love interest Esmé (Eiza González), whose tussles with her would-be mark – as well as her solo efforts later in the film – feel like Ritchie wanting to return to his days on the set of the explosive Sherlock Holmes.

But unlike Holmes, which saw the titular detective galivanting around grimy London streets in his downtime, bringing us up to speed on every minute detail of his deductions, and generally causing mischief, Fountain of Youth’s quieter, more character-focused sections struggle to make discovery enthralling. Which is all the more disappointing when you consider James Vanderbilt’s screenplay heavily imitates The Last Crusade. When Luke assists the dying billionaire Owen Carver (Domhnall Gleeson) into recovering the fountain of youth – you’ll think you’re seeing double. And when he then has to coax his recently divorced sister, Charlotte (Natalie Portman), into tagging along on this globetrotting adventure – you’ll be seeing triple.

This sense of déjà vu is both a blessing and a curse for Fountain of Youth. On the one hand, many of the actors get to have fun hamming up their archetypal roles; Gleeson is odd, awkward and subtly devilish as he slowly wins over the easily manipulated Purdues, the Steve Jobs inspired Carver takes on different shades of Indy villains like René Belloq or Walter Donovan without ever trying to lampoon them. Any time that he’s given the job of babysitting Charlotte’s astute son Thomas (Benjamin Chivers) is a delight. With neither one able to partake in small talk, Thomas gets straight to the point, asking Carver all about his wealthy lifestyle. As the pair talk about his different kinds of private jet and discuss whether the billionaire truly feels satisfied, it’s hard not to crack a smile when Carver, impressed by the young lad’s tenacity, opens a bottle of champagne. On the other hand, the film’s similarities also lead to unfavourable comparisons.

Krasinski is a certain type of charming (at least for The Office era millennials) but his archaeologist is less sardonic than Ford and more sarcastic. Even compared to the wise-cracking Nathan Drake from the Uncharted games, Luke fails to really find his own place in the genre, often resorting to pithy one-liners or comebacks. And besides Gleeson, the archetypal writing leads most of the other A or B-list cast to struggle as they attempt to latch on to any sense of character or motivation. When you can boil down motives to one word and an image, it’s often a sign that there’s something missing below the surface. Visual metaphors like Charlotte’s divorce constantly chasing her in the adultery passages of the King James Bible – or when Luke’s speech of building a family legacy is overlaid with a painting of Narcissus – constantly hit viewers over the head in their shallow attempts at meaning. While no one would argue that Jones and his compatriots are deeply layered, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Boam are careful in highlighting the aspects that make Indy “Indy”.

And that extends to the challenges that our hero faces. While there were plenty of car chases, gunfights and barhouse brawls in the original trilogy, Indiana Jones’ highest points of tension came from spelunking lost ruins. Walking jelly-legged on crumbling platforms, running out of oxygen in a flooding tomb or shooing away venomous snakes or scorpions, were all causes for a palpitating audience. But Ritchie, for as good as his instincts in the crime genre can be, is laughably unprepared for this kind of adventure. Take when Luke and Charlotte are tasked with recovering a lost Rembrandt painting from the sunken Lusitania. What should be a tense ‘ticking clock’ of a scuba diving mission becomes a trivial walk across the deck as the ship is lifted to the surface with ease. As the pair of ‘explorers’ stroll through the brightly lit corridors of a cheap looking set and chuck nauseating quips back and forth, it’s hard to believe that these children of an infamous archaeologist could be having such an easy time.

At least this is remedied later on, but even the innards of The Great Pyramids feel empty, grey and textureless compared to Lucasfilm’s practical sets, leading to a climax that, in addition to being derivative, looks as lifeless and vacant as the VFX staff that were underpaid and overworked to make it.

At its best, Fountain of Youth makes one happy to be a Guy Ritchie fan, its large and bombastic action set-pieces offering an exhilarating adventure in their own right. But at its worst, the film is Apple’s lacklustre vision for an Indiana Jones successor that, even as the credits roll, is unlikely to carry one more film, let alone two.