Guy Ritchie is one of my favorite directors. Perhaps he’s behind modern greats like Nolan or Scorsese, but he's definitely a filmmaker whose movies I’ll go see without hesitation. The film “Fountain of Youth” was no exception — I wanted to catch it within the first weeks of release.
Before diving into the review, a couple of words about the plot. Without spoilers, the story revolves around the main characters searching for a mysterious object throughout the film — something that can grant them immortality, healing, fame, recognition, and much more.
I’ll probably start my review with the film’s pros, since there are far fewer of them than cons. The movie looks rich and expensive — clearly, a lot of money was spent on it, and it’s visually pleasant to watch. Nice filming locations, solid actors — overall, the two-hour movie flows quite smoothly, and there were practically no boring scenes. That’s probably it for the pros.
Now to what I didn’t like. I’d call this film just another Indiana Jones clone. Surprisingly, this was one of those movies where the entire storyline was highly predictable — to the point that I could guess 100% of what was going to happen. The film is full of logical inconsistencies, making you want to ask: “Why?..” or “What for?..” or “How come?..”. It’s pure fantasy that completely breaks the laws of physics. The theme is overused and has been done in countless other films. Even though I mentioned the film uses good landscapes, most of the shots were so short that it felt like I was watching Instagram or TikTok reels — with constant scene changes every 3–5 seconds. And it’s one thing if this happened during action scenes (where it might be justified), but it was used even in dialogues — which was really distracting and unpleasant. The ending was more than predictable — by the time I watched 70% of the movie, I already had a pretty good idea of how it would wrap up.
Nevertheless, although I don’t consider “Fountain of Youth” one of Guy Ritchie’s best works, it’s still a decent adventure movie with some action scenes. People with less developed critical thinking likely won’t notice all the plot holes, and for them, the story might not feel as obvious. So at the very least, it’s worth watching once — and it will probably be interesting to most viewers. Personally, I was expecting a bit more from this film, simply because it was directed by Guy Ritchie. Had it been made by a lesser-known director, I probably wouldn’t have set my expectations so high in the first place.
