Archaeologist Harrison Purdue[1] had two children, neither of whom became archaeologists. Natalie Portman is an art museum curator, and John Krasinski is a… fortune hunter, maybe? Adventure seeker? Art thief? Anyway, he’s extremely dismissive of his sister for being boring instead of whatever he is, but nonetheless, he needs her help to fulfill a dying billionaire’s well-funded wish to, um, not die, by finding the Fountain of Youth.

On paper, it seems like it should have everything needed to be pulpy fun. Mysteries to solve, ancient conspiracies to unravel, lots of interested parties getting in each others’ ways. Even without the nod to the name, it should be a clear contender to usher in a new archaeology-adjacent franchise, in the wake of Indiana Jones winding down. But it just…. doesn’t work.

All of the individual pieces I mentioned above work and are fine. Maybe they even come together well enough? It’s hard for me to say with any certainty, probably because I was distracted by the acting. I’ve never seen Krasinski worse, and I usually consider him to be pretty solid; hell, he’s why I wanted to watch the movie. And he’s directed himself to good effect before, so I don’t think I can blame it on lack of direction either. But his character was bombastic and generally unlikeable, which is not the place you want to be, for this kind of movie. Worse, he constantly declaimed things, in a way no real person would ever do, like what you might expect to see in a high school production of Macbeth, but not in something people would pay to watch.

Portman was fine, and believe me, I know she’s worked through bad direction in the past. I’m pretty confident she could have been better, though, based on experiences with her elsewhere. But also, her character choices were just… implausible. If you think I’m talking about the kid, I am mostly talking about the kid, yes.

Thus, I turn to Guy Ritchie. I understand he has a good reputation, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything he’s made. …a brief pause ensues… Upon research, I’ve seen his Sherlock Holmes flicks, the ones with Robert Downey Jr, and nothing else. I deemed them pretty good, so, yeah. No idea at all what went wrong here, but the mustard, she has not been cut.

[1] Get it?