Despite movie stars in John Krasinski and Natalie Portman, Apple’s shiny big budget adventure Fountain Of Youth doesn’t gleam. Here’s our review….
Ever since developing a streaming platform in 2021, Apple has consistently impressed with a range of TV shows and movies, titles that have bucked the trend of endless intellectual property milking. It’s also developed an array of projects built more on high concepts and star power.
Some are a Severance, fusing textured and rich storytelling with cinematic visuals and pop culture traction. Some are Wolfs, which might have reunited Brad Pitt and George Clooney but fell at the first fence. Fountain Of Youth, in theory, should be in the former camp though sadly trails in the latter. It yet again suggests Apple haven’t quite nailed the movie formula.
As reported earlier in the year, Dexter Fletcher was initially announced to direct this adventure as John Krasinski’s charming archaeologist and thief Luke Purdue ropes his reluctant, newly separated sister Charlotte, played by Natalie Portman, into an international race to find the fabled, titular Fountain of Youth.
Fletcher has been in Apple’s pocket for a while, directing episodes of its making of The Godfather drama The Offer and more recently the lukewarm received Chris Evans and Ana de Armas action vehicle Ghosted for the streamer.
He’s currently busy prepping Sherlock Holmes 3, bringing Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law back the fore after a long absence, so directing duties fall to the obscenely busy Guy Ritchie.
He’s without doubt someone who knows how to mount an ambitious action picture, and did so extremely well a decade ago with his The Man from U.N.C.L.E. remake. For some reason, Ritchie can’t make this modern Indiana Jones-esque romp sizzle though, despite two charismatic film stars front lining and a script from James Vanderbilt, who penned celebrated pictures such as David Fincher’s Zodiac among others.
Part of the issue is familiarity. We’ve seen this kind of film dozens of times before.
National Treasure, which starred Nicolas Cage, is perhaps the more apposite comparison in terms of style, and given both are modern day as opposed to the period trappings of Indiana Jones. But even National Treasure was derivative. Fountain Of Youth arrives decades later with a wealth of similar pictures in the slipstream and can’t do enough to distinguish itself among them.
Frustratingly, certain elements are there. Another inspiration was Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy films, in terms of the two leads. You could entirely imagine Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz as Luke and Charlotte in another space and time, albeit with the tweak of being siblings rather than a romantic pairing. That too is enjoyably different – it retains the screwball element of those similar dynamics but removes the will they/won’t they aspect which has been massively overplayed in pictures such as this.
Instead, Charlotte starts as the reluctant, sensible sister drawn into her reckless brother’s life of constant adventure, only to realise she misses said life, albeit not regretting her choice to become a mother. It is a cliched arc but Portman plays the character with grace and she plays the sibling conflict off Krasinski very well. Not sure I bought her relationship with a stuffy English bore or her posho straw boater wearing son, but that’s a minor criticism.
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Krasinski plays the more obvious character, someone whose dynamism drives the narrative, but he’s always engaging on screen. He has transformed himself from the likeable but aimless Jim from The Office into a 90s era Harrison Ford (and not just because he’s played Jack Ryan). He can confidently essay both action man theatrics but also earnest rugged charm. It strays a little into groan worthy by the end but his flirtation with Eiza Gonzalez’s enigmatic Esme is frequently entertaining.
Nothing wrong with the cast, then. Domnhall Gleeson is effective despite playing a blatantly obvious kind of tech bro billionaire (of course he turns out to be the villain). Arian Moayed swaggers about in a succession (pun intended) of tremendous sartorial choices as Abbas, the most unlikely Interpol agent of all time. Stanley Tucci even pops in, perhaps as a favour to his brother in law Krasinski, as a mysterious Elder within a secret group protecting the world’s most arcane secrets, delivering some choice exposition and ominous sentiment from the Vatican.
Despite these aspects, Fountain of Youth just doesn’t click.
Vanderbilt’s plot has some interesting ideas, weaving in the wreck of the Lusitania and even the Wicked Bible as part of a centuries old quest. It should work. It should be diverting in a silly, Da Vinci Code sort of way. Yet Ritchie just can’t make it come alive, his visuals often drab even when Apple is able to whisk the cast to film in clearly exotic locations. They even manage to film close to the Pyramids of Egypt. No mean feat. Apple’s pull reaches far. So why are we not faced with a film that pushes more boundaries?
It’s hard to say. Perhaps Vanderbilt’s film went through a bit of a threshing machine. Maybe this wants for a cinematic release to capture the large scale, pulp adventure derring do of the concept (it might oddly enough work better as a novel). One suspects it fails to truly work because it you spend the whole running time both reminded of what it stole from, and wishing you were watching that film instead. When it so egregiously rips off sublime examples of the genre (it steals wholesale from the end of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade for its conclusion), you can’t help but find it galling.
Yet Fountain Of Youth clearly thinks this is the beginning of a new franchise, so confident there will be more adventures to come, the final scene practically screams “we’ll see you for the sequel”, though given the hefty price tag don’t bet on it.
Guy Ritchie’s film screams overconfidence when, in fact, it’s about as middle of the road as you can get. And for a film like this, that’s probably its biggest crime.
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