The spirit of Indiana Jones is baked into the essence of the new movie “Fountain of Youth.”
This lighthearted, globe-trotting heist from Guy Ritchie, debuting on AppleTV+ on Friday, stars Natalie Portman and John Krasinski as estranged siblings attempting to piece together historical facts in hopes of finding the mythical spring. The quest takes them to far-flung places from Vienna to the pyramids, as they try to evade capture by the authorities and a shadowy operation intent on stopping the search.
“I’ve been looking to watch this movie for years,” Krasinski said in an interview with The Associated Press. “This is the movie I pretended to be in when I was a kid. This is what got me into the business.”
The film also stars Domnhall Gleeson as the wealthy businessman funding the operation and Eiza González as one of the protectors of the Fountain of Youth.
“ Guy Ritchie gets to work with some of the best cast in the world,” said González, who has now worked with him three times. “The biggest gift Guy has given me, besides the privilege of working with him, is working with them.”
Gleeson, a newcomer to the world of Ritchie, was pretty sure that it was going to be as enjoyable as it looked. And he got a vote of confidence from his director.
“Guy basically said, if you’re not having fun, then this is not going to work and so the idea is to turn up and have fun,” Gleeson said.
Something for the whole family
There were a lot of things about “Fountain of Youth” that piqued Portman’s interest. The chance to work with Ritchie, Krasinski, and the rest of the cast, as well as the travel, but it also felt like something she could share with her own son and daughter.
“It’s so rare to get to make a movie that has this scale and this scope of adventure that you can watch with your kids,” Portman said. “I’m always looking for something that I can enjoy with my children.”
Her character, Charlotte, is an art historian who had an adventuresome childhood with her explorer father and brother Luke (Krasinski) but has since settled for a more stable life. We meet her amid a contentious divorce and custody battle over her 12-year-old son, and she’s not exactly pleased when Luke steals a piece of art from her gallery and attempts to recruit her for the bigger mission. But soon, she’s in scuba gear hunting down a lost Rembrandt in the wreckage of the RMS Lusitania.
“I think that something we search for as adults is how to regain that youthful spirit, how to hold onto that youthful energy and freedom and wildness, even when having to move into some adult responsibilities,” said Portman, who, like her character is recently divorced. “Maybe that can make you a better parent to have a little bit of that glint in your eye.”
She and Krasinski, working together for the first time, fell into the sibling dynamics easily.
“These movies sort of live and die with the relationships,” Krasinski said. “The sibling thing really only works if you’re having genuine fun with the person and it can come off screen. And I laughed with her every single day. She’s so funny.”
A historic shoot at the pyramids
Globe-trotting films aren’t just travelogues for the audience, but their own sort of adventure for the cast and crew. This production earned their miles, skipping between the streets of Bangkok and Liverpool, the Austrian National Library in Vienna and Cairo to film at the great pyramids — where “Fountain of Youth” became the first film of this scale to be granted the privilege to shoot action sequences there.
“It was really a pinch me kind of moment to be like, oh, those are the pyramids and we’re just hanging out here and walking into them and filming in them,” Portman said.
The big first was landing a Boeing Chinook CH47 helicopter in front of the Giza Plateau, and blowing up a jeep, all while the site remained open to tourists.
“With any luck, we didn’t blow it for Hollywood going back there for somebody else,” Krasinski said. “But if we did, at least we got to do it.”
Most of the big action moments “inside” the pyramids were saved for the safety of sets constructed at London’s Leavesden Studio, where they also built the wreckage of the Lusitania in a water tank so big that it took two weeks to fill.
An epic made for the small screen
“Fountain of Youth” might seem like the type of movie that would be a natural fit for the big screen: A big budget, global adventure with major stars and sweeping vistas. While Krasinski champions movie theaters — at the time of the interview, he had a ticket to see “Sinners” on IMAX the next day — he’s also not feeling bittersweet that this one won’t be playing at the multiplex. They all came into “Fountain of Youth” knowing that it was a streaming-first endeavor.
“This was always going to be a streaming movie, so I didn’t really think about it in terms of … Would people want to see it in theaters because it was just one of those things,” Krasinski said. “And I think that’s the new reality. There are definitely movies that are being made for streaming, and there are movies being made for theatrical.”
He added: “It all depends on what the filmmaker’s intent was, what the studio’s intent and I think as long as those rules are laid out clearly in the beginning, I’m down for either one.”
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