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Director Guy Ritchie was welcomed as a bit of an auteur when he started out back in the late 90s. Four of his first five movies were all modern Brit gangsters flicks and the one that wasn’t, Swept Away, was considered a misjudged departure from his signature style. Even when he made his two Sherlock Holmes films and The Man from UNCLE he was giving us playful depictions of quirky English characters surviving against a cartoony criminal underworld. Since then he has become a bit of director for hire though, producing pretty standard fare that could have been made by anyone. 2019’s live action remake of Aladdin is the most obvious example of him being made anonymous by the Hollywood machine but a lot of what he does now is a bit bland. Even the projects where his sensibilities do show through, like The Gentleman movie and show, are a heavily diluted version of what was once made him a distinct filmmaker. I’m not sure I am judging him or anyone else for this, he is very welcome to make different types of films, and some recent ones such as The Covenant still display real skill. I’m also glad we’ve not just had two and a half decades of cockney mobsters but I can’t help thinking that a clear voice in cinema has got a bit lost. 

His latest movie, Fountain of Youth, is perhaps the greatest example of this. Everything from the obvious title to the pedestrian script and plotting and unsurprising action scenes, show no flair or sophistication whatsoever. The only person on the movie who has done anything above and beyond here is the casting director, so what we get is a list of talented and respected actors in an utterly forgettable film. Again though, if all of these performers want an easy paycheque then I’m not going to begrudge them that. The only layers presented by Natalie Portman here are in her wardrobe choices, Domhnall Gleason gets himself a rare fight scene, John Krasinski is just being himself and Stanley Tucci is allowed to play the same character in the same location as he did in Conclave. It doesn’t matter that the story barely supports any of this though, they are having fun. 

Also, to be fair, there is a fairly good time to be had for audience too. You’ll have to make a little bit of an effort to overlook some of the more stupid narrative decisions, like the fact that our heroes are essentially the bad guys (I don’t mean they are antiheroes, I mean they are just amoral criminals and when the plot weakly catches up to this fact it is supposed to be a twist), the occasional misuse of a words and the use of Liverpool to substitute for London even though these two cities look nothing alike. The adventure, which wants to be Indiana Jones meets National Treasure but is barely The DeVinci Code meets Dora the Explorer, has our band of treasure hunters searching for Herodotus’ mythical life giving spring but they might as well be seeking Cloud Cuckoo Land (please let that be the sequel). Still, every single plot detail is actually irrelevant so there is no real need to worry about it.

So while the only mystery is how Ritchie got from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels to this, I can’t say you won’t be entertained.