Fountain of Youth is a 2025 heist adventure directed by Guy Ritchie, written by James Vanderbilt, and released on Apple TV+. It runs 125 minutes and stars John Krasinski and Natalie Portman as estranged siblings Luke and Charlotte Purdue, who reunite to chase the mythological Fountain of Youth across the globe, with Eiza González, Domhnall Gleeson, Arian Moayed and Stanley Tucci in support. It cost approximately one hundred and eighty million dollars, holds a thirty-six percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and was widely described on release as one of the worst films of its year. Having watched it, I am not going to argue with that assessment.

Let me start with the money, because it hangs over everything. One hundred and eighty million dollars, spent on a film that went directly to a streaming service, at a time when Apple is reportedly losing well over a billion dollars a year on that service. And what that money bought is a film I would struggle to describe to you in any meaningful detail shortly after finishing it.

The central failure is one of identity. This film tries so hard to be so many different films that it never becomes any of them. You get stretches of awkward comedy, then abrupt shifts into serious business, then action sequences that the film is visibly straining to make fun and exciting. And the reason none of it lands is that every individual element has been taken from something that did it better. It is not a film so much as a collage, assembled from recognisable pieces of other people's work, and the effect is genuinely soulless. I am not alone in reaching for that word either, as one review described the film as looking expensive but feeling flat, slick but soulless, while others simply called it content rather than cinema.

And that is a shame, because the appetite for this genre is enormous and entirely genuine. We all want more films like National Treasure, The Da Vinci Code and Indiana Jones. That is a wonderful category of film, built on adventure, momentum, and the pleasure of briefly entertaining the possibility that something completely absurd might actually be true. When it works, almost nothing is more enjoyable. This failed in every avenue it attempted.

Krasinski is a likeable performer who is given nothing resembling charisma or spark here, and Portman appears genuinely adrift. Critics noted the same thing, with one review questioning whether Krasinski's character actually achieves anything across the entire two hours. Eiza González comes out best, bringing some real edge as a rival with her own agenda, but she is working against the current.