Written by Andreas Babiolakis

The adventure genre is one that — ironically, yet understandably — has been trecked for over a century in film, meaning that most paths and destinations have already been discovered. To stand out in a genre that begs for risk, reward, and the reinvigoration of the experience of being alive via the discoveries of the unknown, a storyteller has to do some of the heavy lifting. In order to venture into the inexplicable, a filmmaker must create new paths. Let’s say I went to Versailles. I took a plane from Pearson Airport all the way to Charles de Gaulle, Paris, and then took the RER C line from near the Eiffel Tower to finally reach Versailles. I could tell you this recollection once, and you may be mildly fascinated (mainly because there isn’t much to it). If I tell you the same story again a week later, I don’t think you would care at all. There’s nothing new to it.

Now, let’s say that my trip was far more interesting than the bare basics. I start off by sprinting to the airport because I forgot to put gas in my car (silly me, as I was busy fighting off an infestation of ravage badgers that were attacking my lawn, and I got caught up and forgot). The airport isn’t too far; by foot, it’s roughly a half hour away from me. I reach Pearson Airport and am now dripping in sweat; no one should fly like this. So, I go to the duty free shops and pick up some shoddy souvenir merchandise to sport. On the plane, I get accosted by someone who views my all-Canadian gear as ultra patriotic (the elections did just happen up here, after all), and we have to have an emergency stop in Brooklyn, New York as a result. I catch a boat ride from there all the way to Morocco, then hitch a ride that lasts way too damn long to Algeria (it’s where the truck which I snuck onto was heading). From there, I finally grab a plane to Paris. All the trains are down because of a parade, so I steal someone’s unicycle and book it to Versailles, where I narrowly catch the event that is happening there (the unveiling of an undiscovered Da Vinci piece: a painting of a giant tentacle monster that was hidden in a mausoleum for centuries). Now, if I tell you this same story again a week later, it’ll be slightly less astounding; telling it again and again will eventually lead to it becoming outright boring. Should I change the locations, the story will be similar enough that you still wouldn’t care. The magic has already happened.

I have digressed as much as I have because I feel like it is important to preface Guy Ritchie’s latest film, Fountain of Youth, with all of the above possibilities of placidness within seas that should be choppy. Ritchie is far from my favourite director because I feel like his films vie to be smarter than they actually are. While some of his films recently are decent (The Gentlemen was his most amusing effort in years, and even his live-action take on Disney’s Aladdin is better than I anticipated), the Hatfield director has yet to make a film that is as electric as he sets out (I mean this statement for throughout his whole career). He’s just not making Revolver or King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword lately. Part of the issue is that Ritchie is trying to feel fresh: to me, it reads like he is striving to be England’s answer to Quentin Tarantino or the like (ever since the nineties). You cannot be unique if you are riffing off of other creators’ concepts and styles (or, in the case of Tarantino who is known for copying others, you have to truly make these ideas enough of your own recreations in order for them to matter). Every Ritchie film feels indebted to another director, style, genre, or era. It isn’t impossible to have a film that is both an homage and unique, but Ritchie has yet to accomplish either as much as he desires.

Back to Fountain of Youth. This film feels typical of every basic adventure flick without giving us something new. We have a journey to find the mythical fountain of youth (the very one that Spanish explorer Ponce de León searched for): a concept which has been done time and time again. It has been done well, but it has been done before. If the journey there was at least fascinating, then Fountain of Youth would be worthwhile. It not only feels strung together by the most obvious cliches of the adventure genre, it feels watered down, as if there is hardly a journey in between these checked boxes. We just wind up at each and every contrived plot point. There’s no real sense of discovery or conquest. When Ritchie gives in to his obsession for action (which, to be fair, is handled satisfactorily), the adventure side of Fountain of Youth is almost completely obliterated. It’s equatable to how much the Uncharted film missed the point of the iconic Naughty Dog video games. The action sequences in each of the games still feels like you are stumbling upon new terrain and buried artifacts; the film, on the other hand, just feels like there is a quota for obvious sequences that needs to be met, and, as a result, all of the mystery and cleverness that is usually found in these moments is gone. Fountain of Youth is very similar to Uncharted, and I sadly do not mean the games.

*Fountain of Youth* is an obvious adventure film: the worst genre to be typical in.

We follow Luke Purdue (John Krasinski) who is stuck in a pickle. He is sought after by Esme (Eiza González), who is a part of a group of protectors, but he also thinks that Esme has a thing for him; the awkward direction of these will-they-won’t-they scenes feels tone deaf and gross in 2025. Luke’s sister, Charlotte (Natalie Portman) was settled in England with a husband and son, but the start of her story here is one where she is served divorce papers; ultimately, she loses her job at an art gallery when Luke pays a visit to steal a painting, so there’s that, too. In typical adventure fashion, Charlotte is the unhip one who doesn’t know how to live an interesting life anymore, according to Luke (meanwhile, if I had my druthers, I’d easily live comfortably and sensibly like Charlotte, but that apparently isn’t an option, and I must be both a coward and a simpleton). Luke loops Charlotte in a new adventure to find the fountain of youth on behalf of billionaire Owen Carver (Domhnall Gleeson) who is dying of cancer and has funded this mission in order to be saved. Esme and her troupe are also “protecting” the fountain of youth, so they are after our heroes as well (and so Luke’s inability to stop being thirsty remains).

The film starts off alright, with some explanation of this quest we are embarking on and the players involved. It’s around the second third when I realized that the entire film is crafted this way, with over-examinations of sequences that really do not need to be this scrutinized (there’s nothing too cryptic or deep to go through here). It’s as if you are being spoonfed the entire time on this Apple original because the idea is for you to be multitasking while watching as to not miss a thing. This is a highly inappropriate objective with filmmaking. I don’t insist that every film demands your attention and provoke your mind, but we’re in the day and age of the medium being threatened. We should be making films that shouldn’t be ignored, not background noise. I don’t think this is what Ritchie purposefully set out to make, but it’s difficult to not see Fountain of Youth as such. After this strong-enough opening (nothing riveting, but it is fine), we plod along from trope to trope, over-analysis to over-analysis, action scene to action scene. Barely anything happens to raise the stakes outside of some obvious twists (which, to me, means that the stakes remain as they are, since we can see these turns from a mile away). We reach the ending which is as “okay” as the opening is, but by then it has taken way too long for us to care; we can also read the writing on the wall and know how this one will turn out (we don’t have to be a cunning adventurer like Luke Purdue to figure it out).

The characters are elevated only so much by our actors (González isn’t given much to work with but she tries her best; Portman is charming enough to make her character not come off as naggy or frustrating; Krasinski stands out the most, even if the dialogue he is given is as cool as a principal trying to fit in with the students at a sock hop). They then all transform into stereotypes or shells of better characters from other works. I grew weary of Charlotte’s child, Thomas (Benjamin Chivers, who is a strong enough young actor who deserves better), who is a music prodigy who gradually became a corny version of Link with his ocarina unlocking stuff via music ala the The Legend of Zelda games A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask (amongst others). Stanley Tucci has a cameo appearance which is reduced to one moment used twice where he plays the token wise man — cane and all — who gifts a character (Esme) with precise knowledge that she will need to know (and only he has the answers to, conveniently). The characters, who were once keeping Fountain of Youth afloat, wind up being as flat as the turning points that are meant to feel wondrous.

When the film ends so quickly that you may have missed it if you just blinked, with Oasis’ song “Live Forever” to usher us out no less, it’s clear that Fountain of Youth as a film is indicative of the creation process for said project: one with high hopes and inspiration, which is reduced to being as enthusiastic as an exhausted pigeon by the end. The intentions were there but Fountain of Youth is as adventurous as me getting up to go to the bathroom and returning to my computer to keep working. The film is harmless, but what good is an adventure film that doesn’t get your hands dirty? We’ve gone these paths before with far more interesting people and with much greater gambles. Despite being about the search for the fountain that restores the use of anyone who bathes in it, Fountain of Youth instantly feels dated and will make you feel ancient when you are left to reminisce on adventure films that are way stronger than this.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.