Fountain of Youth (2025) is directed by Guy Ritchie and written by James Vanderbilt. It stars John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Eiza Gonzalez, Domhnall Gleeson, Arian Moayed, Laz Alonso, Carmen Ejogo, Stanley Tucci, Benjamin Chivers, Steve Tran, Michael Epp, and Daniel De Bourg. The film follows Luke Purdue (Krasinski), an international treasure hunter who recruits his art historian sister, Charlotte (Portman), to aid him in his search for the fabled Fountain of Youth. Alongside their team, which includes their terminally ill employer, Owen Carver (Gleeson), the siblings embark on a globetrotting quest to find clues to the fountain’s location. Throughout their quest, they’re pursued by gangsters, cops, rival corporations, and ancient protectors sworn to keep the fountain’s location a secret. With danger in hot pursuit, the estranged siblings are forced to set aside their differences in order to make it through alive. 

The A-list cast is as naturally charismatic as one would expect, but not a single person does something interesting, original, or cool with their character. The cliche-filled script does them zero favors, but it’s not bad enough to let them off scot free. Krasinski and Portman essentially play the real-life versions of themselves, but thrust into a globe-trotting adventure. There’s nothing about how they act that establishes them as people capable of finding the world’s most sought-after treasure. The only reason we know how skilled they are is that the movie tells us. It feels akin to someone who’s clearly shorter than you insisting that they’re six feet tall when you know for a fact that you’re only 5 ‘9. To make matters worse, they also seem to solve every puzzle and riddle as if it’s a grade school brain teaser. I thought this was supposed to be something that even history’s best minds couldn’t find?  

The script often tries to make the audience feel a specific way about certain characters, but never actually finds convincing ways of doing so. For example, the film really wants us to think Natalie Portman’s character is a totally boring buzzkill simply because she doesn’t want to be a treasure hunter, as if not wanting to risk your life daily is some kind of immoral and regrettable choice. Not to mention, her ‘normal’ job as a fine art dealer isn’t even a boring one. I understand that the purpose of this is to highlight the theme of living life to its fullest, but it needs to make sense on a surface level before it can ever be effective on an abstract one. It kind of just feels like the filmmakers hate ‘normies.’

Thankfully, the on-point sibling dynamic between the two leads saves them from being insufferable. Everyone else is forgettable, other than Domhnall Gleeson as the film’s eventual villain, but it’s not because of anything positive. Gleeson is genuinely likable, and the first two-thirds of the film only make him more so. Unfortunately, the script lazily decides that he needs to be the villain for no other reason than his wealth. It often feels like AI could’ve written it, but this is a moment I’m certain came from a computer. I have no problem with evil rich people, but I do have a problem with weak character development.

The morality of these characters is also confusingly inconsistent. For example, John Krasinski’s character has a flirtatious rivalry with Eiza Gonzalez’s character from the moment they meet. Still, they try to brutally murder each other at any given opportunity. This makes sense in a movie like Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), considering the couple in that film have a prior relationship before they’re forced to fight. Here, it just feels forced and unrealistic. I’m pretty sure that regardless of how hot the person is who’s trying to kill you, the life & death stakes will snuff any thought of romance almost immediately.

The film features nearly every adventure cliche imaginable, borrowing from numerous superior films, including National Treasure (2004), The Mummy (1999), and most notably, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). It’s also a great example of a modern-day studio-led blockbuster that tries to appeal to every demographic, an approach that unsurprisingly appeals to no one. Every conversation that should be serious is instead disposable and goofy, but never funny enough to justify it being that way. This leaves little time to establish palpable stakes, but it’s clear that the filmmakers don’t actually want us to worry about the characters; that would be far too stressful for us, I guess. There are admittedly a handful of fun scenes throughout, but not nearly enough to save the film from being an uninspired piece of trash.

Along with the script’s questionable knowledge of history, it also lacks engagement because it consistently reveals information to the viewer before the characters. This leaves long stretches where the viewer is desperately waiting for the characters to have a lightbulb moment, which ultimately makes them feel stupid.

The nature of the fountains’ powers also makes little sense. They feel the need to complicate its lore beyond ‘drink the liquid and gain eternal life’ to the point where it becomes needlessly convoluted. This all leads to a climax that shamelessly tries to set up a sequel in the most on-the-nose way imaginable. Trust me, this isn’t getting a sequel, which makes this scene all the more hilariously cringey. 

Overall, this is a lazy and generic big-budget adventure romp that’s often so cynically unoriginal, it makes me squirm. It’s occasionally engaging in that ‘shut my brain off, watch it because it’s free and I’m bored’ kind of way, but that’s about it. It’s the kind of film that makes a person grieve over all the smaller, likely better films that could’ve been produced with its massive budget. Unless you want to see a version of The Mummy gone wrong, there’s almost nothing to recommend. D