Fountain of Youth Review

Fountain of Youth follows two estranged siblings, Luke Purdue (John Krasinski) and his younger sister Charlotte Purdue (Natalie Portman), as they team up to find the titular Fountain of Youth. Following this mission, they embark on a global heist where their knowledge of history will be tested, as well as their relationship and family history. Sponsored by rich billionaire Owen Carveer (Domhnall Gleeson) and ed by their father’s old team – Deb McCall (Carmen Ejogo) and Patrick Murphy (Laz Alonso) – Luke and Charlotte will travel to the ends of the earth to find what they are searching, but will it be everything they are looking for?

This is John Krasinski’s film through and through. For those in the audience who are fans of his acting style, this is another chance to appreciate his charisma as a lead character who is sometimes mistaken, often chaotic, but always funny. His comedic timing works particularly well in this film as perhaps the only character whose humour actually lands most of the time, making this movie entertaining to watch, despite some clear faults and weaker elements in its production. While a brilliant actress, Natalie Portman is entirely miscast in the role of Charlotte, with multiple lines that feel incredibly artificial and exaggerated and very little comedy that actually works. There is also very little sibling chemistry with her brother, and the only scenes where her character seems to show any depth and realism are when her son is involved.

As an Indiana Jones-inspired film with elements of history and archaeology that play an important part in the larger context of an action and adventure film, it does work relatively well. The inclusion of different elements of history is fascinating, if only a little far-fetched and harder to make sense of as the movie continues. Yet overall, the clues hidden in history, and more specifically art history and archaeology, are as fun for the audience to uncover and understand as they are for the characters involved. This format works out particularly well because it clearly plays to each character’s strength with their specific interests in historical artefacts, classical paintings, and even music. However, the slow-motion scenes are unnecessary and overtly dramatic, making the film feel a lot slower than it should have been. Ultimately, it seems like this story relies too much on the special effects – some of which are not particularly successful – and its high production value to create showy sequences rather than focusing on the key elements that make a story, such as the writing and acting.

US!!! WE ARE A SMALL, INDEPENDENT FILM WEBSITE WITH NO BIG BACKERS, SO IF YOU LOVE OUR SITE AND OUR WRITERS, PLEASE CONSIDER HELPING US TO KEEP FILM JOURNALISM ALIVE!

For a film whose lines are often too artificial and whose plot twists do not ultimately hold up, it actually deals relatively well with its backstory and reveal of the necessary info. ittedly, there are a lot of moments that could easily feel like an infodump on the audience due to the high level of information the viewers need to be able to initially follow the story. However, those scenes do not feel too expositionary or repetitive as the movie does a good job at delivering all the information in scenes of conflict between the characters and using those moments to also reveal more details about the protagonists and their relationships with each other.

The last half gets too messy too quickly as the story struggles to create an ending that both makes sense and manages to surprise its audience. In the end, it doesn’t quite manage to do either of those things: the final so-called twist of the film is incredibly predictable and badly executed both from a storytelling and visual point of view. As the movie reaches its third act, it increasingly feels like the plot is not able to tie all its elements together, and yet desperately attempts to do so in a final showdown that only disappoints.

Overall, Fountain of Youth is an entertaining film that does not seem to reach its full potential. The trips around the world are an interesting plot device that the film uses well to showcase a variety of different locations, and the elements of historical evidence that the characters uncover to embark on this journey are equally fascinating to see and worked well into the storyline, but the final act of the film ends up being too rushed and sloppy for any of that to actually pay off in the end.