Fountain of Youth (dir. Guy Ritchie)

by Jack Martin | May 22, 2025

Certificate: 12A

Running Time: 125 mins

UK Distributor: Apple TV+

UK Release Date: 23 May 2025

WHO’S IN FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH?

John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Eiza González, Domhnall Gleeson, Carmen Ejogo, Stanley Tucci, Laz Alonso, Arian Moayed, Daniel De Bourg, Steve Tran, Benjamin Chivers, Michael Epp

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Guy Ritchie (director, producer), James Vanderbilt (writer), Ivan Atkinson, Ritchie Atkinson, David Ellison, Dan Goldberg, Don Granger, Jake Myers, William Sherak and Tripp Vinson (producers), Christopher Benstead (composer), Ed Wild (cinematographer), James Herbert (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A brother and sister (Krasinski and Portman) unite for a globe-trotting adventure…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH?

Throughout Fountain of Youth, the latest film from director Guy Ritchie, the two main characters argue with each other about how one of them has settled for a much safer and less exciting life than the other, who’s embraced their adventurous and more reckless side. There’s a similar struggle within Ritchie himself, who for the last few years has largely cast aside his oddball directorial style, previously put to good use in films like Snatch, RocknRolla and his Sherlock Holmes movies, in favour of a streamlined director-for-hire persona that’s a bit easier for studios to take him on board some of their bigger productions, such as Jason Statham vehicles Wrath of Man and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, and last year’s disappointingly bland war thriller The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

Interestingly, Fountain of Youth finds Ritchie embracing both versions of himself, delivering not just the reliable beats expected from his studio-friendly side, but also the energetic and ever so slightly chaotic self that he built his career off of. The result is an entertaining experience that, while far from being the freshest of material, is executed with enough panache to make you feel like you’re watching a version of Ritchie you haven’t seen in a good long while.

Working from a script by James Vanderbilt, the movie opens with dashing adventurer Luke Perdue (John Krasinski) outwitting numerous opponents in Thailand, including a mysterious woman named Esme (Eiza González), whilst making off with a stolen painting. In London, he reunites with his estranged sister Charlotte (Natalie Portman), a far less adventurous museum curator going through a messy custody battle for her young son Thomas (Benjamin Chivers), and one attempted theft of a Rembrandt painting later – it’s a long story – Charlotte is drawn into Luke’s latest mission: to locate and visit the fabled Fountain of Youth, said to grant anyone who drinks from it immortality. With endless funding from dying philanthropist Owen Carver (Domhnall Gleeson), Luke manages to convince Charlotte and soon Thomas as well to come along with him and his team for a globe-trotting adventure to find the necessary clues, and defeat Esme and countless other adversaries, that will lead them all to the right place.

The film gives off the vibe of a big-budget blockbuster you would have seen on the big screen in the 90s or early 2000s, specifically ones like The Mummy or Sahara which were all in their own way trying to replicate the Indiana Jones action-adventure formula with plenty of visual effects to bust out whenever things steer into fantastical territory. Fountain of Youth does all of that too, but while Vanderbilt’s script more than obviously owes plenty to Indiana Jones – to where the name of the main characters’ deceased father is, no joke, Harrison – Ritchie livens up what is otherwise a fairly generic narrative with a fine helping of personality. The director sneaks his trademark cheeky playfulness into big action set-pieces, filled with well-choreographed fighting and vehicle chases, and even scenes where characters are simply swapping expository dialogue with one another, to where it all flows neatly as Ritchie moves things along with an energetic zest that has been sorely missing from a number of his more recent films. It’s good to see him having a bit more fun with movies again, not too dissimilar to when Tim Burton found his groove once more with last year’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, though this movie has a much tighter focus in its overall plotting.

Said plot certainly follows the traditional adventure movie formula down to a tee, from deciphering clues within some of the world’s most lucrative locations to the puzzle-laden labyrinth housing the very Fountain of Youth of the title, but it’s done in a way where you can look past the silliness of it all and just have fun with it. Not only does the fruitful combination of Ritchie’s lively direction and Vanderbilt’s bouncy script help set the right tone, but so do the performances by a cast who are similarly allowed to let loose, especially John Krasinski who’s in full charm mode as the lead action hero, the kind that you could easily see existing in any one of those movies from the 90s or 2000s, but so happens to be in one set and released in 2025. It makes things a lot less self-serious, which is exactly what’s needed for a film like this which, to a point, knows what it’s supposed to be and does a good job at being the kind of adventure movie you could put on if you’re bored with revisiting the same Indiana Jones stories.

Of course, Fountain of Youth is far from perfect. Its formulaic tendencies make it a very predictable film, right down to the identity of the main villain hardly even being a surprise, and there are a few moments when the answers to some of the clues they’re trying to solve require a substantial suspension of disbelief for any of it to make sense, even in the heightened world in which this appears to take place in. Some of the supporting cast members, particularly Carmen Ejogo and Laz Alonso, sadly get very little characterisation to work with, and are mainly just there in the background, though at least they’re eventually given something to do, unlike Stanley Tucci who shows up for one scene and is promptly never heard from again (supposedly to set him up for a role in a future sequel, which of course they tease at the very end).

In all likelihood, the otherwise decent Fountain of Youth will become another high-concept blockbuster lost to the streaming algorithm – but even if that’s the case, it’s at least cool to see Guy Ritchie being his energetic self once more, a side to the filmmaker that we’ll hopefully see much more of going forward.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Fountain of Youth is a fun action-adventure romp that sees director Guy Ritchie return to his former energetic self in order to bring to life a formulaic but entertaining script by James Vanderbilt and further elevate some charming lead turns by the likes of John Krasinski, making it a slight return to form for the filmmaker.