Fountain of Youth

After he directed Aladdin — the anonymous 2019 remake that you’d forgotten made over $1 billion at the box office — Guy Ritchie became extremely prolific almost overnight. He made another movie that same year. But more importantly, Aladdin marked a major stylistic evolution for the famously flashy filmmaker: he got really into clothes. Nowadays, you find yourself admiring the tailoring in his films more than the films themselves. There is little, for instance, to like about Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. But, boy, was Cary Elwes dressed smartly. Unfortunately, the costumes in Ritchie’s recent films are inversely proportional to their quality. The worse the movie, the better the clothes. The clothes in his latest, Fountain of Youth, are excellent.

After Inheritance, the adventure film Fountain of Youth is the second streaming film of the week to take viewers around the world. From London to Giza, the feature goes on a whirlwind ride to solve an impossible quest. The answer is in the title itself, the Fountain of Youth. The promise of eternal life is too much to resist for many, as John Krasinski’s Luke recruits his younger sister Charlotte (Natalie Portman) to help him. Their adventure is thrilling, engaging, and surprisingly well done for a streaming film. The Purdue siblings are poles apart. Luke (Krasinski) follows his father’s teachings and is now an art thief. Charlotte (Portman) has become an art curator but is missing the joy in her life. Her son Thomas (Benjamin Chivers) believes she begins to gain some adventure with the return of her brother. Together, they work on finding the elusive Fountain of Youth with the backing of an Irish billionaire, Owen Carver (Domhnall Gleeson). But they have all sorts of people on their trail, including Interpol, trying to stop them. Will they succeed?