When Hollywood finally masters artificial intelligence — assuming the technology hasn’t destroyed us all by then — you can expect a lot of results like “Fountain of Youth,” a movie that’s acceptably entertaining and completely soulless.
There are actual humans behind this globe-trotting action-adventure, an Apple Original appearing only on Apple TV+, among them director Guy Ritchie (“Snatch,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”), screenwriter James Vanderbilt (“Zodiac”) and stars John Krasinski and Natalie Portman. “Fountain of Youth” looks good and moves well; it’s nothing if not a professional piece of work. But it’s also what you would get if you fed the following prompts into the movie version of ChatGPT: “National Treasure,” “The Da Vinci Code,” “Romancing the Stone,” that Tom Cruise “Mummy” movie and all five installments of the Indiana Jones franchise.
Is there anything wrong with that? Not if you need to narcotize the kids for a couple of hours or have a rainy Sunday with absolutely nothing else going on. Still, your response to “Fountain of Youth” may be purely Pavlovian, so familiar are its story beats, shoot-outs, special effects and dialogue.
Krasinski plays raffish archaeologist Luke Purdue, first seen stealing an Old Master painting from a Thai gangster and leading a lot of extras on a hectic foot/car/delivery cycle chase through Bangkok. Then it’s off to London and the National Gallery, where Luke’s sister Charlotte (Portman) is a curator until big brother relieves her of her job by stealing another painting and going on another high-speed chase around Trafalgar Square.
It turns out that six classic Renaissance artworks hold clues to the whereabouts of the legendary Fountain of Youth and that Luke and his two teammates (Laz Alonso and Carmen Ejogo) have been hired to find it by Owen Carver (Domhnall Gleeson), a bajillionaire who’s dying of cancer and hoping for a Hail Mary healing. Charlotte comes along for the ride because Luke knows the spirit of their late treasure-hunting father still lurks inside her proper demeanor.
From there it’s on to Vienna, Cairo and a particular spot off the coast of Ireland, each destination holding the next piece of the puzzle. Close on the heels of our heroes are a resourceful Interpol detective (Arian Moayed of “Succession”) and a hot number (Eiza González) with MMA fighting skills, ties to an ancient society and an on again, off again flirtation with Luke. The locations are swank, whether real (the Austrian National Library) or digitized (everything else), and each sequence ends with a busy action donnybrook and the rattle of automatic gunfire. They’ve even hired Stanley Tucci to class up the joint in one scene (and only one scene; presumably his day rate was high).
“Fountain of Youth” is what you get when people who are good at their jobs make something utterly lacking in inspiration. It’s the very definition of “content” — commissioned by Apple to sell its subscription TV service and thus available only on the small screen, so you’re even cheated out of the big-budget canvas of a theatrical release. The cast is likable, and the actors do what they can with dialogue that is either explanatory boilerplate (“And now you’re going to steal another precious cultural artifact?”), arrant cliché (“You’ve chosen comfort and predictability, but life is an adventure!”) or just plain bad (it’s a toss-up between “Allow me to clothe the elephant that is stumbling about the room” and “You’re a child flying a kite in a lightning storm, and the storm is more charged than you think it is!”).
So why does this get a just-above-average star rating? Because it’s a movie designed as functional entertainment, and for lack of a better word it functions. The climactic scenes especially have an appreciable sense of pixelated grandeur, even if you could swear you’ve seen it all before, which you have, many times over. “Fountain of Youth” is the kind of movie that doesn’t really need anyone to watch it for it to exist; when all is said and done, it’s just an ad for a streaming service. But if you do watch, you may find it the equivalent of a reliable meal at a family chain restaurant: Everyone goes home satisfied and full, and no one has the slightest memory of what they ate.
PG-13. At area theaters. Contains violence and action, some language. 125 minutes.
Ty Burr is the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr’s Watch List at tyburrswatchlist.com.