The Fountain of Youth offers shallow fun and a trickle of truth

MPAA Rating: PG-13
Reel Rating: 2 out of 5 reels

(The following review contains spoilers!)

The Fountain of Youth is one of the great mythological quests: a mysterious spring that gives immortality. It has seen several film adaptations, including one of the best lines in film history when discovered by the Spanish at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

This new film is a fun adaptation by British action director Guy Richie, which draws from multiple influences, including Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tomb Raider, and The Da Vinci Code. It never rises to the level of its predecessors, but it’s good for light entertainment on a lazy summer evening.

The story begins with Luke Purdue (John Krasinski), an art thief with an oddly sophisticated set of martial arts skills. After narrowly escaping a Thai gang, he crashes a gallery owned by his curator sister Charlotte (Natalie Portman), stealing one of her paintings and getting her fired in the process. It turns out this painting is part of a sequential code hidden by Renaissance masters to safeguard the location of the Fountain of Youth. Funded by dying billionaire Owen (Domhnall Gleeson), Luke enlists his freshly unemployed and bewildered sibling on an international adventure to find this elusive elixir, all while avoiding two antagonistic factions–one legal, one mystical.

This leads to a final showdown beneath the pyramids of Giza, during which there is a predictable twist in the story.

English director Guy Richie is a veteran of action movies, and he could do this genre of film in his sleep. Perhaps he did. On the plus side, the fight sequences and car chases are tight, well-edited, exciting, and engaging. Meanwhile, in the few moments that don’t involve karate chops or machine guns, the story is underdeveloped and lazy. This is a classic “by the books” movie that uses every trope established by the Indiana Jones series, especially the ship of fools cast. There’s a witty, handsome protagonist, an annoying female sidekick, a deadly femme fatale, a bloated billionaire, and even a child who finds a sudden clue at the last minute.

There’s a Monkey’s Paw dilemma when they finally discover the Fountain, which has a neat design. One can drink from the well and achieve eternal life, but there is a catch: it requires taking the life of the thing you love the most. In Luke’s case, that would be his sister and nephew. He won’t do this and refuses the offer. “It’s all yours,” he tells Owen.

It’s a simple and obvious lesson that could just have easily been told in a two-minute-long animated Bible story. But in an age where people freely sacrifice relationships and loved ones for fame or power, it’s an important lesson.

Owen has a different dilemma. The person he loves the most is himself. For him, there is no sacrifice. He will take the water, live forever, and have absolute power. Fortunately, he is stopped by the sexy female assassin Esme (Eiza González), who uses an ancient key to shut down the well’s mechanism. The audience is then treated to a truly bizarre backstory. We learn Esme is part of an ancient religious order tasked with hiding the location of the Fountain. Her unnamed mentor–played in a single scene by Stanley Tucci, who acts strikingly like his character in Conclave–explains that at some point, mankind will be selfless enough to drink from the Fountain, achieve eternal life, and be given “unlimited energy,” but is not yet ready.

In other words, humans, thanks probably to science or psychology or something, will one day evolve out of our negative impulses and then be ready to achieve godhood. This is a truly evil philosophy that hardens back to the Tower of Babel. Thank goodness Tucci’s character in Conclave (Cardinal Aldo Bellini, a progressive from the U.S.) didn’t become Pope.

Despite this ridiculous lore, The Fountain of Youth is mostly just good—albeit adolescent—fun. It doesn’t rise to the level of campy cult favorites like The Mummy (1999), but I have to confess that I smile quite often. Also, never drink anything promising eternal youth or endless riches—it’s probably a scam, and if it isn’t, that would be much, much worse.