Fountain of Youth is Apple TV+'s wasted opportunity snooze-fest

Last night my wife woke me up three times on the couch between 8pm and 10:30pm. There were two key factors in my struggling to stay awake:

1. A toasty warm heater

2. I was watching the new Apple TV+ film The Fountain of Youth.

She told me to just “go to bed,” but I was determined to see it through to the end. Because I do not value my time, apparently.

Director Guy Ritchie’s movie output is broadly pretty spotty. None of his films have ever been great, but he is a filmmaker who can churn out films that are more often than not fun to watch. And that’s the biggest crime of this new film - it’s one of those occasional films of his that isn’t fun.

This film needed to be fun. It is a global adventure with heroes that are just a little bit morally suspect, villains who are really suspect (but you’d probably still have a whisky with them), and thrills that defy physics a little bit - it’s supposed to be fun. But, there I was snoozing my way through large chunks of it, rewinding back further than I realised I needed to repeatedly.

While this is a type of film… a genre of film… that we all broadly tend to like… its incredibly rare that any of them tend to be any fun. Cinema screens are littered with flat, lifeless, swashbuckling junk. Back when this stuff was a novelty, it worked a bit more than it does nowadays. But in 2025, we’ve seen decades of Indiana Jones imitators. And even then, less than half of those Indy films are any good.

With actors who are both bored-looking on screen and really badly miscast. Hey, I like Jim from The Office, but he’s just doing a weak Ryan Reynolds impersonation here. And then, because she is the female lead in one of these types of films, you have Natalie Portman on screen playing the role of the personality-deficient scold.

I didn’t think this needed to be said… Natalie Portman is a stunning woman who makes many a heart (and libiodo) swoon. Consider her work in the Miss Dior ads where she is on screen being fun, flirty, and fully in control. A complete babe.

Then compare that to how she comes across in The Fountain of Youth where she’s doing a pale imitation of that episode of The Simpsons where Homer (in this case, John Krasinski) teaches Lisa (Portman) about how taking risks is what life is all about.

Please understand - I love Lisa Simpson dearly. But, her role on screen is not to have audience members fall in love with her. Part of the fun of seeing movies at the cinema is falling in love with charming, impossibly good-looking movie stars.

Getting back to Krasinski for a moment. The show Jack Ryan was constructed to take audiences on a journey with Krasinski. He started out as Jim from The Office and is credibly turned into an action-y globalist spy. But his on-screen presence usually isn’t that guy. He’ll always carry with him some of that ever-present Jim Halpert earnestness wherever he goes and he’s an ill-fit here.

I really wanted to like this one.