'Fountain Of Youth' A Review

Fountain Of Youth is an action/adventure movie in the mold of Indiana Jones and National Treasure but decidedly not family friendly given the staggering body count. Estranged siblings Luke(John Krasinski) and Charlotte(Natalie Portman) reconnect in the search for the titular FoY for vague and suspect rich guy Owen(Domhnall Gleeson). 

Krasinski, gods love him, has never and will never escape Jim from The Office. Much like Seinfeld he got rich and famous from playing a character close to himself and the reality is, beyond that, he has no real range or ability. Here he is miscast and his attempts at wise-cracking adventurer come across like a walking sexual harassment lawsuit. Portman is the better, more well-rounded actor, but she struggles as well trying to make her paper thin baffling character make any kind of believable sense. The script obviously sucks and reads like an AI was prompted "DaVinci Code with assault weapons" but most of the supporting cast is better able to, at least, have fun and be watchable- Gleeson, Laz Alonso, and Carmen Ejogo are all solid but underused.

The budget was huge so it looks pretty good with some on location shooting and a fair amount of practical stunt work and minimal CGI. The soundtrack is pretty Gen X cringe and the costumes are, across the board, pretty laughable. All-in-all an extremely odd, derivative, catastrophic waste of money and continues director Guy Richie's wildly inconsistent later career.

Perhaps containing some perverse pleasure in the schadenfreude arena but unequivocally a bad movie.

Currently streaming on Apple+.

Don't See It.