Fountain of Youth

I've been asking for a new true adventure film since the last National Treasure, but I guess I just wanted it too much, and I got the curse instead of the blessing.

It looks fine, on the surface. Guy Ritchie makes an international hunt for treasure that certainly impresses visually, but in terms of content (and note that Ritchie didn't write this film, when writing is one of his true strengths as a filmmaker) it's as shallow as they come. Some rote puzzles, intermittent fist fights, and an utterly charmless gang of bystanders that follow Krasinski wherever he tells them to go. Stanley Tucci literally just shows up once, for about two minutes total, and you can almost see him just turn around to collect his paycheck at the end of his scene.

Do yourself a favor and go play the new Indiana Jones video game instead. It's so, so much better than this, and was made with true reverence for the art of adventure films.

If you thought national treasure was lame back in the day, fear not this is way worse. This makes that movie look like citizen kane. I'm a huge fan of John Krasinski but this is very poor.

It just doesn't flow very well, quite typical for a guy Ritchie movie I find. Just jumps from one exotic location to the next without a huge amount of thought about continuity. Every other movie John Krasinski has been in. He has been a complete departure from the office but honestly in this movie he looks more like Jim than anything else he's been in mannerisms aren't acting skills wise. Been waiting awhile for this to come out so yeah, I'm disappointed.

I knew for the trailer that this film was going to be a bit generic but I suppose I was hoping it wouldn't be that generic. As someone who grew up on Indiana Jones, loves Uncharted and has a soft spot for National Treasure this felt very familiar but not in a knowing way because there's nothing this movie does with the established formula that feels remotely unique. Guy Ritchie doesn't bring any of his signature energy to this movie and it's starting to feel like his tendency to put out as many films as possible over the last few years is starting to come back to bite him. Fountain of Youth just feels flat in every way and it ends up feeling like something made for streaming. John Krasinski's a badass and Natalie Portman is charming but it kind of just feels like the script is trying too hard to make them overly likeable and it actually felt a bit annoying after a while. The film starts out a quick pace but starts to drag on in the second half and the climax in particular was a bit of a slog to get through. There's a lot of talented people involved in this movie but I'm not really sure what drew them to it in the first place. It just oozes mediocrity and as someone who's a big Guy Ritchie fan I'd like to see him get a bit more selective with his projects.

Yeah, the same director of criminal dark comedies like "Lock, stock and two smoking barrels " is making pg-13 movies, trying to obscure all Indiana Jones movies and hundreds of adventures like "Meg" etc.

I don't know really. May be I'm just too old to watch same cliched films over and over again, but everything great has ended 10 years ago or even earlier. People don't need new Lara Croft, people need a rethinked concept of some NEW adventure formula. Not just "seek'n found" with chases and one-trait-characters. Guy Ritchie is perfect at crimes, perfect at mixing it with dark comedies. But his last movies are just lame attempts to grab a bite of "Umcharted"-like blockbusters.

Sorry, but no. Skip.

I haven't reviewed a movie in half a decade, but I felt a warning was justified in this case. I have had to start and stop this one several times throughout my first and last viewing of this piece of dialogue garbage on Apple TV+.

I went in wanting to like this movie, I'm a huge fan of John Krasinski's work and an even bigger fan of Natalie Portman & her whole repertoire dating back to Leon: The Professional. So expectations were high coming in.

This film is just off in every way. Pacing? Weird. Dialogue? Poorly written, corny and cringe. Acting? Even though the artist have the chops to do so, the writing is so terrible that they do justice to them in a bad way. The acting is laughable from almost every character. Suspense? Predictable and rips off too many mainstream plot lines. Romance? Pathetic attempt, comes off fake. Conflict resolution? I mean, I guess maybe you could say so but the movie is so predictable and corny that you don't even realize that this might be the best part of it because everything else pales in reverse by comparison.

Do yourself a favor and don't waste your time. Huge swing and miss by Apple TV+. This would have bombed at the box office.