John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Eiza Gonzalez, and Domnhall Gleeson star in director Guy Ritchie’s action-adventure, written by James Vanderbilt.
From its premise to its narrative structure, Fountain of Youth feels like a movie spawned by Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
Rooted in that decade’s spate of spirited action-adventures, and penned by busy Hollywood scribe James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, 2007; The Amazing Spider-Man, 2012; Scream, 2022), the script taps into the writer’s own family history as the great-grandson of Alfred G. Vanderbilt, who died in the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in 1915.
By the younger Vanderbilt’s fictional accounting, his great-grandfather was among those who searched for the legendary Fountain of Youth, and that’s what he was doing on the Lusitania when it was sunk by German soldiers during the first World War. Fountain of Youth, the film, begins with the dashing John Krasinski racing recklessly through the crowded streets of Bangkok, Thailand, while bad guys chase him.
Poised and perfectly coiffed, Krasinski maintains good posture on the motorbike while he smiles and endlessly quips witty one-liners to the bad guys who are in pursuit, including Eiza Gonzalez. Everyone is after a mysterious painting in Krasinski’s possession, but he is too dashing and witty for the bad guys, and so he escapes from their clutches on the streets and on a speeding train, heading to Europe, where he can nimbly alight with another painting from a heavily-guarded museum, where his sister Natalie Portman just happens to be the curator.
Make that ex-curator, as she is summarily dismissed from her position, making her free and available to join her brother on a grand mission. The team includes Krasinski, Laz Alonso, and Carmen Ejogo; they have been hired by dying billionaire Domhnall Gleeson, who is desperate to find the Fountain of Youth. They are joined by Portman’s young son, Benjamin Chivers, who provides comic relief and the occasional brilliant insight.
As they walk the Earth and have adventures, they are pursued by relentless Interpol agent Arian Moayed and his anonymous team of stuntmen, as well as mysterious Eiza Gonzalez and her anonymous team of stuntmen. All the stuntmen are extremely well-armed, which allows for extended, bullet-riddled action sequences, explosions, car chases and vehicular mayhem, and many, many anonymous stunt people.
Directed by Guy Ritchie in a pedestrian manner, as though he were directing traffic, Fountain of Youth nonetheless thrives on its cheeky throwback charm. Natalie Portman single-handedly makes the whole bloated mess entirely watchable, through all the noise and confusion and improbabilities and visual effects.
Consider: we never doubt that the heroes will survive and that the bad guys will meet the hand of fate and that the film will conclude with the discovery of the titular fountain and that morality lessons will be tossed about and that visual effects will save the day, even as narrative logic and common sense get thrown out the window, in favor of more action and things blowing up and people getting shot willy-nilly.
Indeed, the entire affair is so blasted silly that it’s impossible to take it seriously because it’s not meant to be take serious. Fountain of Youth is a B-movie with an A-movie budget, and, nowadays, that’s entertainment.
The film premieres Friday, May 23, only on Apple TV+.
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