Fountain of Youth – it’s the journey not the destination

Natalie Portman, John Krasinski, and Domhnall Gleeson in Fountain of Youth

Fountain of Youth fits neatly into the archeology adventure genre filled with favorites like Indiana Jones. It’s light and fun with car chases, gun fights, cool secret passages in pyramids, and a bickering brother and sister.

In Fountain of Youth, the mystery solving team are siblings Luke Purdue (John Krasinski) and
Charlotte Purdue (Natalie Portman). Their father was a famous archeologist who taught them that the journey and the adventure were more important than the treasure at the end of the mystery.

In the beginning Luke was busy stealing priceless works of art because that’s where the clues to the location of the fountain of youth were hidden. He was pursued by Interpol in the form of Inspector Abbas (Arian Moayed) and Esme (Eiza González), a mysterious woman who kept offering the hand of kindness to Luke.

Then Luke stole a Rembrandt from the museum where Charlotte worked – from right under her nose. Charlotte was mid divorce and arguing over the custody of her musical prodigy son Thomas (Benjamin Chiver). She was highly irritated by her brother showing up and getting her fired.

Luke of course got Charlotte hooked on the mysterious clues and roped her into joining his gang of adventurers. Some of the adventurers had worked for their dad. The new guy, the one with all the money, was Owen (Domhnall Gleeson). He was paying for everything.

Owen managed to send Charlotte’s bothersome husband away, leaving her with full custody of Thomas. Thomas was roped into the adventure, too. This is the part where the 11 year old musical genius deciphered the clues and saved the day.

Natalie Portman, John Krasinski, and Domhnall Gleeson in Fountain of Youth
Are we there yet?

Now that the clues were decoded, they took off for Egypt to explore a secret passage way under a pyramid. The way through the secret rooms was full of fun engineering tricks and cool sets. The movie was over two hours long, partly because they dragged out the suspense of finding out how to get through all the hurdles of pyramid construction. During this part of the film I was thinking, “Okay, we get it. Can we just get on with it?”

People were still chasing them, music still mattered, and eternal life looked very close at hand. The ending was a bit of a surprise, but fitting in light of what we knew about Luke and Charlotte. There was even a moral to the story if greedy villains getting what they deserve counts as a moral, and I think it definitely does.

Guy Ritchie directed this one. He crammed every trope in the book into it but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You know what to expect in this action adventure and it delivers. A bit of excitement, a lot of fluff, and a thrilling conclusion. It was fun, the bickering siblings were good together, and the ending was satisfying. You can see it on Apple TV+.

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