Fountain of Youth movie review: We never got a third National Treasure movie, and thanks to Guy Ritchie, we still haven't

Indian Express

23-05-2025

After he directed Aladdin — the anonymous 2019 remake that you'd forgotten made over $1 billion at the box office — Guy Ritchie became extremely prolific almost overnight. He made another movie that same year. But more importantly, Aladdin marked a major stylistic evolution for the famously flashy filmmaker: he got really into clothes. Nowadays, you find yourself admiring the tailoring in his films more than the films themselves. There is little, for instance, to like about Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. But, boy, was Cary Elwes dressed smartly. Unfortunately, the costumes in Ritchie's recent films are inversely proportional to their quality. The worse the movie, the better the clothes. The clothes in his latest, Fountain of Youth, are excellent.
Starring John Krasinski and Natalie Portman as estranged siblings who go on an epic adventure to locate the fabled Fountain of Youth, the movie comes across as a third copy of Indiana Jones. Even Nicolas Cage's two National Treasure films had more spark than Ritchie's overwritten, bloated, and unevenly paced new adventure film. Fountain of Youth has a tremendously fun pre-titles sequence, where Krasinski's character, an adventurer named Luke, steals a valuable painting in Bangkok and evades capture from a gang of goons and a mysterious woman played by Eiza Gonzalez.
Also read – The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare movie review: Guy Ritchie's wobbly World War II action-comedy is his weakest film in years
The sequence is tactile, slick, and, most importantly, filmed not on a soundstage, but on location in the streets of Bangkok. Unlike most streaming tent poles these days, which have a certain flatness that invariably hurts their final score, Fountain of Youth has the look and feel of a big screen spectacle. The Bangkok sequence opens on the streets, and ends on a train. In the middle, Luke gives his adversaries the slip by running into a market and commandeering a street food cart. It's fun stuff, but the thrills end the moment the titles roll. Fountain of Youth turns into a plodding affair; you realise that James Vanderbilt's screenplay could easily have been fashioned from a discarded script for an Uncharted adaptation.
Not that Ruben Fleischer's actual Uncharted movie was any better, but at least it featured two actors — Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg — who seemed to have real chemistry. Krasinski, for no fault of his own, is grossly miscast as the swashbuckling (yet earnest) Luke. His relaxed line delivery and generally laid-back demeanour is a poor fit for Luke, who, it is suggested, has the brash charm of Harrison Ford and the sincerity of Nic Cage. Fountain of Youth is the kind of movie that would've benefited greatly from another draft of the screenplay, and a thorough look at who's playing who.
It has the whiff of something that was made on the fly, which is odd, considering the resources that must've gone into it. They obviously filmed across the world, on real locations — the climax is shot in and around the Great Pyramids, which is where the treasure our heroes are trying to locate has been resting for thousands of years. Luke and Charlotte — that's Portman's more proper character — are hired by a wealthy billionaire who says that he is dying of cancer. He needs them to join hands and locate the mythical fountain, whose water, it is believed, can give the drinker immortality.
After stopovers in London and Vienna, the group finds itself being chased by Interpol — a tragic reminder of Red Notice — and Gonzalez's mysterious organisation. This covert organisation is lead by Stanley Tucci, who is making a habit of doing cameos in movies like this, probably to pay for his next three vacations to Italy. His presence also reveals Ritchie's franchise ambitions. Even though he's basically a gun-for-hire here — he usually writes his own movies — Fountain of Youth isn't as aesthetically plain as some of his recent output been. That being said, the filmmaker has an exceptionally poor track record with franchises — the third Sherlock Holmes has been stuck in development hell for over a decade; The Man from UNCLE, RocknRolla, Operation Fortune, and Aladdin didn't get the sequels that they were supposed to. Remember when he declared that he has a seven-movie series planned for King Arthur: Legend of the Sword?
Read more – Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning: Tom Cruise deserved better than a goofy Abbas-Mustan movie that chooses spoon-feeding over spectacle
But streaming industry can't be compared to the theatrical marketplace. And streaming on Apple TV+ is an even stranger proposition. For the tech giant to spend however many millions on Fountain of Youth — to be clear, the movie looks expensive — is like you or I not thinking twice before buying a bag of potato chips. The small one. Ritchie is always at his best when he's making standalone capers that bear his unmistakable stamp, not when he's trying to appease masters by churning out potential franchise-starters.
Fountain of Youth falls in the second category. Despite the handsome production values and infrequent bursts of fun, it's a by-the-numbers experience that is way more serious than it should've. Here's a movie in which the protagonists are hunting down a magical underground spring that has the power to change the world as we know it; medicine, governance, economies could all be on the line here. And yet, Fountain of Youth has the tone of an overdue library assignment. Ah, well, at least the cardigans and shawls are pretty.
Fountain of Youth
Director – Guy Ritchie
Cast – John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Eiza Gonzalez, Domhnall Gleeson
Rating – 2/5
Rohan Naahar is an assistant editor at Indian Express online. He covers pop-culture across formats and mediums. He is a 'Rotten Tomatoes-approved' critic and a member of the Film Critics Guild of India. He previously worked with the Hindustan Times, where he wrote hundreds of film and television reviews, produced videos, and interviewed the biggest names in Indian and international cinema. At the Express, he writes a column titled Post Credits Scene, and has hosted a podcast called Movie Police.
You can find him on X at @RohanNaahar, and write to him at [e-mail]. He is also on LinkedIn and Instagram. ... Read More