'Fountain of Youth': a high-octane journey that lacks depth

WHEN Hollywood finally masters artificial intelligence - assuming the technology hasn't destroyed us all by then ~ you can expect a lot of results like Fountain of Youth, a movie that’s acceptably entertaining and completely soulless.

- TY BURR

There are actual humans behind this globe-trotting action-adventure, an Apple Original appearing only on Apple TV+, among them director Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Sherlock Holmes, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), screenwriter James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) and stars John Krasinski and Natalie Portman.

Fountain of Youth looks good and moves well; it’s nothing if not a professional piece of work. But it’s also what you would get if you fed the following prompts into the movie version of ChatGPT: National Treasure, The Da Vinci Code, Romancing the Stone, that Tom Cruise Mummy movie and all five installments of the Indiana Jones franchise.

Is there anything wrong with that? Not if you need to narcotise the kids for a couple of hours or have a rainy Sunday with absolutely nothing else going on. Still, your response to Fountain of Youth may be purely Pavlovian, so familiar are its story beats, shoot-outs, special effects and dialogue.

Krasinski plays raffish archaeologist Luke Purdue, first seen stealing an Old Master painting from a Thai gangster and leading a lot of extras on a hectic foot/ car/delivery cycle chase through Bangkok.