Recommendation
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On paper this movie sounds good: the cast is strong, they clearly had a budget, and it’s Guy Ritchie, so it feels like it has all the elements to succeed. Unfortunately, it just fails to deliver on that potential.
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I left it feeling a bit confused, but mostly just disappointed. I’ll go into detail about what I don’t think works about this movie when I can talk a bit more about spoilers (I want to give specific examples), but suffice it to say this one isn’t worth your time.
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Thoughts
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From here on I want to compare something about the movie to other, similar movies, so I’m going to get into spoilers.
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Brief Synopsis
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I’m recommending that people don’t see this movie, so I feel like I should provide a bit of context for what happens in the film so that my further comments can be understood without watching.
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The primary characters in the film are Luke Purdue (John Krasinski), who is a generic adventurer-type character, his sister, Charolette (Natalie Portman), who is an art expert, Own Carver (Domhnall Gleeson) who is the billionaire backer for Luke’s hunt, Esme (Eiza González Oh, Baby Driver! I knew I recognized her from somewhere) who is an operative for some secret organization that is trying to protect the fountain, and Inspector Jamal Abbas (Arian Moayed) who is a detective sent to track down Luke following his initial art heists.
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Luke is the main protagonist of the story and we are introduce to him with a chase sequence as he flees from gangsters with a stolen painting. He then encounters Esme, who explains that she is going to work against him as he searches for the fountain. This also begins an awkward attempt at romantic relief between Esme and Luke, which is present throughout the film. Next, Luke steals a painting while meeting with Charolette and the two are thus brought together for the heist.
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Around this point, we learn that Luke and Charolette’s father was some sort of adventurer and the two children have followed separate paths: Luke following in his footsteps, but overly concerned with treasure, and Charolette attempting to leave that behind to start a family and lead a normal life.
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With the team all together, the story gets into MacGuffin mode. For the record, this isn’t a criticism. On the contrary, that’s sort of the ride you’re signing up for when you watch something like this. If anything, I think it actually takes its time letting the audience in on why they’re stealing all this art. With the help of Carver’s resources, the team begins traveling all over the place in search of the next piece of the puzzle.
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At each turn they find the thing they’re looking for, only to be interrupted by Esme and her crew, or the detective searching for them, after which they e
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Anyway, ultimately, the Fountain of Youth is below the Pyramids, and when Luke interacts with it he discovers that he would be stealing life force from his loved ones so he choses not to accept the tradeoff.
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The billionaire guy, we learn, is not actually sick or dying or anything (a plot point that is brought up briefly before they get to Egypt just so they can twist not really, “I just want power”). He’s revealed as the big bad and when he goes to make the same decision, he apparently only loves himself which means there’s some sort of infinite loop which is “too dangerous” so Esme uses some random lever somewhere to shut it down and the bad guys die and everyone else narrowly escapes.
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There’s a cringy goodbye between Luke and Esme. She is suddenly responding to his weird advances and flirts about hoping she doesn’t have to stop him again before the group splits up.
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Indefensible Protagonists
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The main issue with the story is less the fact that they are doing a treasure hunt but that the characters, from the beginning, are not morally justified at all in their attempts to follow the treasure trail.
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I found myself immediately comparing this movie to National Treasure. They are extremely similar, with virtually all the same plot points, but they feel completely different, and this is down to the ethics of how the two groups of treasure hunters are going about their hunt.
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In National Treasure, the rich bad guy is revealed to be bad in the opening scene, instead of at the very end, and this reveal does something extremely important for the plot. The protagonist (Nate) in that movie, now has a reason to break the rules. If he doesn’t follow the trail, even breaking the law to do so, then some people who only care about money and won’t value the artifacts are going to do it anyway. Following the trail is as much about protecting it as about finding the treasure at the end.
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In Fountain of Youth, they need to steal some famous paintings to find a map to the treasure and in National Treasure they have to steal the Declaration of Independence because there’s a map on the back. However, in national treasure they know that there’s also a group of well funded thieves that are also intending to steal the Declaration themselves imminently.
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Nate already has enough justification to put his plan into motion, but he still goes the extra mile and tries to inform the people involved about the map on the back and to get access through legitimate channels before resorting to stealing it.
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In contrast, Luke is stealing paintings willy-nilly, wrapping his sister up in the conspiracy, without any justification since there are no other entities trying to steal the paintings themselves and without attempting to get the information he wants via a legitimate channel.
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For those reasons, they feel like thieves, not a quirky protagonist that’s try to find the treasure and stop the wrong people from getting their hands on it. Almost every beat from National Treasure is played out in Fountain of Youth but to a worse effect. In National Treasure, Nate’s dad is wrapped up in the conspiracy in a similar way to Charolette (they play extremely similar roles as being against the treasure hunting family gene). Nate, however, goes to his dad because he has to get something that his dad has and tries to keep him from getting wrapped up in the trouble he’s started, whereas Luke kidnaps his sister and then draws her and her son into the conspiracy.
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The main characters in Fountain of Youth are on the wrong side of the story virtually the entire time, and there’s no justification for why they’re going about things in this way. They have a billionaire backing them, and at one point they use that to get access to a famous bible (which they then steal again without much justification) so it’s clearly possible for them to do things through legitimate channels, they’re just choosing not to.
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One final point where National Treasure and Fountain of Youth differ in a way that shows the difference in quality between the two movies is that in National Treasure, Nate and his father outsmart the bad guys and are the ones to discover the treasure, whereas in Fountain of Youth, Luke doesn’t really do anything. The bad guy also makes it to the fountain, he also uses it, and he would’ve destroyed the world (or something?) if not for Esme pulling the Deus Ex Machina lever.
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Extremely Flat Secret Society
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The group that is attempting to stop them from finding the fountain of youth is poorly set up and ultimately it’s a bit frustrating. I was most reminded of either the tribe that defends the homonoptra in The Mummy or the palidins from Jumper when I think about the type of secret society in this movie, but in Fountain of Youth the secret society isn’t used to nearly the same effect.
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The comparison to The Mummy is more direct, but unlike in that film, the protagonists in Fountain of Youth don’t team up with the protectors once they discover why they’re protecting the secret ancient temple in Egypt (again, extremely close parallel). When Luke learns what the fountain does, he makes an individual choice not to use it, but he doesn’t attempt to stop the billionaire guy, or to shut the whole thing down or anything.
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The parallel I see with this movie and Jumper is more about exposition. In both movies, we’re shown the members of the society before we learn what they are or why they’re doing what they do. In Jumper, however, the reason for them tracking down and killing the jumpers is the entire core conflict of the film.
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As I’ve alluded to above, once Luke and the others learn what the fountain is for, it doesn’t change their relationship to the secret society. They’ve already “won” because they found it, and they also don’t make any attempts to try and help the society prevent the bad people from using it (Esme does that on her own).
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Random Points that Make the Whole Thing Feel Underbaked
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This is a bit disorganized, but there were a handful of lines or scenes in Fountain of Youth that were laking a payoff and are just confusing in hindsight.
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The most glaring one is a discussion between Esme and Luke at the beginning of the film where she asks him what he things the fountain of youth is: whether it’s a literal fountain, or a concept or something else. He answers that he doesn’t know but if they’re trying so hard to protect it then he wants to find out.
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I don’t have a problem with Luke’s answer, but once we learn that it’s essentially a magical fountain, it calls back into question what on earth the point of that line was from Esme. Everyone thinks it’s a real fountain with magical powers, but her line of questioning makes it sound like, “it’s not a literal fountain, you don’t even know how little you don’t know”, and that would’ve been cool, except it is a literal fountain, so he did know what he did know…
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Another random thing is Stanly Tuchi’s random cameo. I expected something more give that he has an and credit, but he’s only there for a 30 second scene where he tells Esme to stop being merciful and to start using force. She was already being pretty forceful and her tactics don’t really change after that point, so on the whole that also doesn’t serve much purpose.
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The interpol detective guy is just not good at all. He delivers his lines in a really weird way. Setting him opposite to Natalie Portman also made the difference really clear. She does a pretty good job but it all just comes off super inauthentic played off of him. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is, but that get really deflates everyone elses’ performance when they’re on screen at the same time.
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There’s a ton of unexplained weird magic in this movie. Things start of pretty grounded, and everything about the treasure trail is all things people really could do, like hiding messages in random places with riddles you need to solve to crack the code, but then there’s the magic fountain, which, okay fine. The explanation for that seems to be something like “Aliens?” maybe? Or God? It’s not entirely clear, but what is clear is that humanity’s not ready…
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The thing that’s not made by god is the room where there’s a steal drum they have to play to move the rock. Apparently if you play the right song then the massive slab of limestone will hover. I think they were trying to say it’s like an air hockey table or something, but it’s not explained and it seems like it really requires you to suspend your disbelief that the ancient Egyptians would be able to build something like that.
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One other thing that I mentioned briefly but want to reiterate, is that the “twist” that the billionaire isn’t actually sick doesn’t change anything about the story. That doesn’t change the morals. It’s not like, if he had been sick, then stealing all these artifacts or threatening people with guns, etc would suddenly be more justified.
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Conclusion
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I have been thinking about this movie a lot, but only in comparison to similar movies that did a better job. The more I think about National Treasure the more similarities I discover, but each time I realize something else that maps directly between the two, it comes with another realization about how it raised the stakes and tied into the story in National Treasure and how it does nothing for the stakes in Fountain of Youth.
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I think my main takeaway is that people should go watch National Treasure. Then if you get really, really bored, and you have nothing else to do, you can watch Jumper. Don’t bother with Fountain of Youth. If you’re thinking, “but I really want to watch a movie with a pretty thin plot where a guy travels around following clues to lead them to a secret artifact”, then watch the Da Vinci Code.
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