Where to even begin with Fountain of Youth?  If you happen to see it in its entirety, you will note that it smacks of a number of influences.  It is equal parts Indiana Jones, James Bond, and The Da Vinci Code in a film about the Fountain of Youth.  With so many competing narratives, it is difficult to bottle that into a tight introduction that gets you interested in reading further.  Nonetheless, I will do my best to continue.  Your job is to bear in mind these far more popular points of comparison in order to fill in the blanks of my synopsis.

The person who is about to get popular at the beginning of Fountain of Youth, but for the wrong reasons, is Luke Purdue (John Krasinski).  He is in Thailand where he has stolen a painting from an unnamed Southeast Asian mafia boss.  That is not me being lazy, by the way, the film never identifies this person.  We do, however, see his henchmen going after Luke, who eventually boards a train out of the city to escape.  This is apparently a good time to take a nap, and during it we see the first of a few recurring dreams for this latest in what is a hereditary line of treasure hunters.  In the vision, he picks up a treasure and is dazzled by it, taking it for himself when that looks to be the wrong choice.  Upon awakening, he is confronted by Esme (Eiza González) sitting across from him.  She is a protector of some kind.  To save yourself some trouble, she is part of a secret, Vatican headquartered organization tasked with keeping hidden the location of the eponymous myth.  Yes, this Catholic sighed at that eventual revelation.  For now, Luke manages to get away once more, making his way to London.  Once there, he visits Charlotte Purdue (Natalie Portman), his sister and curator at The National Gallery, who is also in the process of going through a divorce.  She is not necessarily happy to see him, them having a fall out at some unseen point in the past.  Still, he gets her talking long enough to steal a Rembrandt piece, and taking her along his escape route.  Though she is soon returned, along with the work of art, it is enough to earn the suspicion of Inspector Jamal Abbas (Arian Moayed) of the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) and fired from her position at the museum.  Despite telling the authorities that she does know Luke’s location, Charlotte angrily goes straight to her brother.  He is expecting this, believing he can convince her to help him find the title artifact.  She incredulously, but not just because of the absurdity of the goal.  She also does not trust him.  Yet, her latent curiosity has her accepting the invitation to board the research vessel owned by Luke’s financier, the billionaire Owen Carver (Domhnall Gleeson).  He is dying of cancer, so you can get why he might be interested in their target.  Their destination is the North Atlantic where the RMS Lusitania sank off the coast of Ireland.  Aboard the wreck is the original print of the painting Luke took from The National Gallery, the previous one being a copy.  Once more having to dodge Esme, they retrieve their prize by raising a section of the luxury liner’s hulk and return to London.  In case you are wondering why all the interest in art, they all have Jesus as their subject, and they lead the team to a special collection of Scripture called the “Wicked Bible.”  It received that unfortunate name because it omitted the word “not” from Exodus 20:14, telling its readers to commit adultery.  Once more Charlotte proves invaluable in figuring this out, but she is also mad at Luke again for getting her into trouble.  She is even more upset with her ex-husband for leaving the country, meaning she is going to have to take in their son, Thomas (Benjamin Chivers).  As it turns out, dad’s job transfer had been arranged by Owen as a ruse to keep Charlotte on the team.  It should also be pointed out that she loves Thomas, but is not keen on involving him in his uncle’s affairs.  Nonetheless, they leave for Vienna, Austria, to look at a copy of the Wicked Bible.  When their cursory examination yields no clues, Luke decides to steal it.  As before, Charlotte is angry to be an accessory to theft and is about to leave with Thomas until the boy sees a pattern in the clues that the adults had not been able to decipher.  He notices that there is a musical pattern that somehow aligns with the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, with the last note concluding at the Great Pyramid at Giza.  Thus, guess where our band heads to next?  Because the people Esme works for already know all this, she is sent there with the further admonition from her boss, the Elder (Stanley Tucci), not to mess around.  What is less clear to me is how INTERPOL knows where everyone is going, but whatever.  Finally, in case you have not figured it out by now, Owen is the real villain.  The dozens of armed men he brings underscore his true intentions.  Thus, while a battle takes place above ground, below the ancient Egyptian tomb an increasingly impatient Owen belies his desire to profit from the fountain.  After a series of intricate puzzles, they get to the waters.  Instead of being the first to drink, Owen shoots Luke and orders him to be the one to take the initial sip.  When he puts the liquid to his face, something happens involving special effects and Charlotte and Thomas that I frankly did not understand.  At any rate, though it never touches Luke’s lips, his wound is healed, as are a number of other gunshots, and it is enough to convince Owen to give it a try.  Owen gulps it down, and again a complicated series of things occur, the long and short of which is that he dies.  The rest make it out and the movie ends.

If you did not recognize the parallel to the climactic moment in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) in Fountain of Youth’s conclusion, then perhaps you have not seen the former?  As alluded to in the introduction, there are more obvious references in the latter.  Still, these two provide some obvious parallels to Catholicism, at least ones that I am more comfortable and familiar with than The Da Vinci Code.  I have not read the book or seen the movie, but what I do know about it an ancillary fashion sounds like it is a load of nonsense.  So, too, is Fountain of Youth.  At least with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, we can point to Scripture as being the basis for why anyone would go after the Chalice used by Jesus at the Last Supper.  In Fountain of Youth, their evidence (and it is difficult to use that word for this) is that it is something talked about by almost every culture around the world.  I take that as further proof of the existence of God.  God is either who He says He is, or a liar.  Those are not my words, but those of C.S. Lewis.  As such, since God is omnipotent, it makes sense that certain aspects of culture are universal.  Further, because something like a fountain of youth is really a quest for the divine, how mankind has conceived of it is flawed because humans are flawed.  In this way, the Elder makes a good point that we are not ready for the power that the fountain of youth holds for us, whatever they are.  His words also point to a test that Luke seemingly passed.  As I said in the synopsis, I am not clear what happens to him, but he has some kind of vision that if he drinks, those he loves will die.  Later, there is some kind of explanation about the waters revealing what one loves the most, and that if it is yourself, then they are deadly.  I guess that is why Owen shrivels up and croaks?  Either way, Luke is selfless in that moment, and that is at least a Christian ideal.

That Christian ideal is about the best one can say about Fountain of Youth.  Otherwise, it is a jumble of different ideas thrown into an action-comedy flick.  There are also constant reminders about how life is about the journey, not the destination.  There is some wisdom in that, but it is as cliché as the plot.  This is all a long way of saying . . . yawn.