AppleTV heavily promoted this Guy Ritchie movie, and to be honest, I’ve enjoyed seeing John Krasinski and Natalie Portman’s promotional tours on a bunch of talk shows. As it turns out, their interviews are actually more entertaining than the movie!

Just from the trailer, you get the vibes of archaeological action adventure classics like Indiana Jones, The Mummy, Tomb Raider, or even National Treasure. Throw in a bit of Bond/Bourne there too, as the first time we see Krasinski’s Luke Purdue (not exactly a heroic-sounding name) in a motorbike and car chase through Bangkok. Luke is billed as a treasure-hunting mastermind who leads a team on a big scavenger hunt adventure. He ends up enlisting his estranged sister Charlotte (Portman) after stealing a Rembrandt painting at a museum where she works as a curator.

Luke is one of those wisecracking, smart-alecky types with a motormouth that gets more irritating as the movie progresses. This isn’t a knock on Krasinski since he could just be sticking to James Vanderbilt‘s script. To be fair, Charlotte is just as chatty in this one, and their over-expository back-and-forth becomes increasingly bothersome. You can even sense that Luke’s teammates, Deb (Carmen Ejogo, criminally wasted as a stock character) and Patrick (Laz Alonso) share my dread. Krasinski is great as Jack Ryan in the Amazon series, but he barely lights a candle to Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones or even Brendan Fraser in The Mummy, which his character is clearly modeled after.

While most treasure hunters usually have to travel creatively and on a modest budget, Luke + co. get to ride in state-of-the-art jets thanks to their primary sponsor, ailing Irish billionaire Owen Carver (Domhnall Gleeson), seeking a miracle cure for his cancer. Charlotte’s 11-year-old son, Thomas, ends up tagging along, and Benjamin Chivers is quite the scene-stealer. His brief conversation with Owen is the most memorable one in the movie!

Apple spent (read: squandered) $180 million on Ritchie’s globe-trotting imitation of much better action adventures. A lot of that hefty budget seems to have been spent on the on-location shoots: Bangkok, Vienna, London, and Cairo, with the finale set at the pyramids of Giza. While it’s cool to see scenes shot on location, I’ve become a bit desensitized, given most blockbusters are done this way nowadays. The action set pieces are nothing to write home about, perhaps it also has the disadvantage of being released on the same weekend as the latest Mission: Impossible movie; it’s tough to top that one in terms of high-octane action.

The worst offense of Fountain of Youth is it’s devoid of soul or any kind of emotional resonance. None of the characters are likable, which makes it tough to care about their journey. It would’ve been more palatable had it been a more entertaining ride, but that’s not even the case here. The myriad of car/motorbike/train chases here are ho-hum, and the shipwreck scene looks very much like a water tank set piece. The Viennese library fight scene is the only one that’s pretty memorable thanks to Eiza González’s sassy performance.

Esme starts out as an antagonist, but her motivations are revealed later in a conversation with Stanley Tucci (in a basically cameo role). Without giving anything away, González’s Esme reminds me of The Mummy’s Ardeth Bay, played by Oded Fehr. Inspector Abbas (Arian Moayed) seems to have a better knack as a fashion designer/model than anything Interpol is supposed to be doing. In fact, the only thing worth remembering is the impeccable clothes and scarves everyone wears in this movie!

Ritchie’s work is a hit and miss; this one is more akin to the subpar Operation Fortune than The Covenant, which is easily Ritchie’s best work in the past decade. Most of the humor doesn’t land, while some of the action scenes are unintentionally hilarious, such as the shootouts at the pyramids. Despite the huge budget and promising concept, Fountain of Youth is poised to be one of the worst movies of the year.

Have you seen AppleTV’s Fountain of Youth? Well, what did you think?