Subscribers of 
AppleTV+ seem to like to watch the same movies over and over again, as many of the platform’s blockbuster additions find a place in the streamer’s Top 10 and don’t leave. Guy Ritchie’s Fountain of Youth is a case in point, with the movie continuing to be a dominant presence in the streamer’s chart months after it originally debuted in May.
For a movie that did not receive the greatest response from either critics or audiences, the action adventure starring John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Eiza Gonzalez, and Domhnall Gleason has proven to be one of the most durable movies on Apple TV this year. The movie, which plays from the same kind of hymnbook as National Treasure, the Indiana Jones movies and classics like King Solomon’s Mines, is a globetrotting, visually exotic movie with the following synopsis:
“A treasure-hunting mastermind assembles a team for a big adventure. But to outwit and outrun threats at every turn, he’ll need someone even smarter, his estranged sister.”
The biggest issue around Fountain of Youth came down to its inability to elevate itself to the heights of the many previous action-adventure movies that it ripped most of its plot from. The comparisons to several classic movies of the genre did not lead to anything positive, and only resulted in the movie’s reviews mostly falling into a “been there, seen that” category.
‘Fountain of Youth’ Was Panned, but Became a Huge Winner on Streaming
When taking a glance at Fountain of Youth’s reviews, the 34% Tomatometer score and 38% audience rating suggest that it is not a movie that should be getting the kind of attention it has been receiving. Critics called the film an “amalgamation of previous ideas from other films together, strips it of finesse, and leaves you wondering if you’ve seen it before,” while audiences couldn’t decide if it was Krasinski’s “boring” acting, Ritchie’s “boring” direction, or the film’s air of “bad parody” that really made them dislike the movie.
When it comes to the world of streaming though, there is nothing about a movie that can stop subscribers clicking a new movie when it is placed on a flashy homepage banner or sent directly to them by email. This has been the case with Fountain of Youth as the movie has not been out of the Top 10 since it debuted, and it clearly isn’t going anywhere just yet.
Although there are many reasons why Fountain of Youth will not be getting a sequel, these are strange times, and it is hard to rule anything out entirely. The film’s reviews suggest that there is a lot of disappointment hanging over the movie, but its continued success in Apple TV+’s library proves that the starry production has more than paid its way in streaming views. There have been no hints that Ritchie and the cast are planning on reuniting for a second adventure, and for now it looks like Fountain of Youth is going to be one-and-done chapter in the globetrotting action-adventure genre.
- Release Date
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May 19, 2025
- Runtime
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126 minutes
- Writers
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James Vanderbilt
- Producers
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Jake Myers, William Sherak, Dana Goldberg, David Ellison, Don Granger, Tripp Vinson, Ivan Atkinson
