Fountain of Youth Review: A Mind-Numbingly Boring Adventure

Fountain of Youth Review: In this heist action-adventure film, a pair of estranged siblings come together after years to find the famed Fountain of Youth. However, on this adventure of a lifetime, they might just stumble upon more than just bad guys and roadblocks – they might just find immortality!

The film has a runtime of 125 minutes.

Fountain of Youth Review

Ah, the thrill of watching good-looking adventurers going on a journey to mystic worlds and finding things that we never can with nary a care in the world. What a beautiful, fun and thrilling way of existing to just get up and leave and not think about your children’s education and whether or not you have the savings to have champagne in Austria and also be able to afford a sudden health scare.

Fountain of Youth is one of those random movies that takes you on a predictable adventure without working out the nuances. It goes on this adventure to find the fabled Fountain of Youth that is supposed to give you endless health, wealth and everything that you can dream of without thinking about how much debt you’d be in if it were, say, just a fable. I remember being mesmerised by these stories when I was younger. You know, Indiana Jones and even Tomb Raider, to an extent, have given us these stories that rely entirely on their viewers to suspend their disbelief completely.

Fountain of Youth, in that regard, is a hollow and joyless spectacle that is meant to get our adrenaline running, but the problem is that we have seen this movie many times in the past. The idea of this mystical fountain doesn’t bring joy to us anymore because how many times does one feel excited to watch adventurers on the same adventure? On top of that, neither the journey nor the destination feels particularly exciting in any way.

The pacing is terrible, and there are fights peppered in between that almost turn up on cue to raise the tension in the runtime. It doesn’t work and leaves you a bit bored of these token bad guys randomly turning up. The police, headed by Arian Moayed, is not even an afterthought; he’s a joke of a character with no talent for an arrest, and, frankly, the story doesn’t even try to give you the impression that he’s pertinent to it in any way.

Natalie Portman and John Krasinski, who play siblings Charlotte and Luke, respectively, repeat the same lines over and over again about the journey being more important than the destination. Luke will sometimes get on your nerves because he gives the impression of a know-it-all who thinks that his opinion is the only one that matters. Having safety and security is not enough living, according to him, if you’re not putting your child in constant danger. I don’t understand how Charlotte gets roped into this stupidity, especially because she insists on taking her son along everywhere.

On that note, I don’t understand a lot of the decisions that the film and its characters make. It’s frustratingly long and pain-strickenly boring and infuriating on equal measure. All the characters are hollow caricatures, seemingly without a soul. And, of course, there’s the rich white guy who suddenly turns out to be a supervillain in the end – who could’ve figured that out? In the end, Fountain of Youth is neither a good adventure nor a good drama. The characters are forgettable and stupid, and make terrible decisions. It doesn’t seem realistic, especially in this economy, and its biggest crime, in my opinion, is that it’s repetitive and boring.

Final Thoughts

At 125 minutes, this film is just too long with nothing of note happening. The action and the adventure are things we have seen far too many times in far too many other films and shows. At this point, only zombies coming out of the Pyramid of Giza would get me to sit up and take notice, but probably with a completely new set of characters who feel like real people.

Also Read: Final Destination: Bloodlines Review: This is How Sequels Should be Done!