#308. 'The Fountain of Youth' (AppleTV+)
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The main event is Guy Ritchie's Fountain of Youth (Apple TV+), the John Krasinski/Natalie Portman/Aiza Gonzalez/Domhnall Gleason globe-trotting treasure hunt about paintings, the Wicked Bible, and a family-feud-powered immortality spring. Sonny gives it a surprisingly generous review, calling it dumb and generic but far more entertaining than expected, competently shot, and enjoyable "straight-to-TV" comfort viewing; Mike is on the opposite end, saying he was bored, found it flat and lifeless, and disliked the sibling chemistry between Portman and Krasinski. JVL is closer to Mike, dinging Natalie Portman as having become a forgettable, uninteresting screen presence (unfavorably comparing her to Aiza Gonzalez and Ana de Armas), wishing Domhnall Gleason's billionaire hadn't been the obvious heel, and floating a fantasy recast with Hugh Grant as the villain and Matthew McConaughey in the lead; the trio riffs on Sonny's theory that Ritchie is using these glossy, forgettable Apple TV+ movies (this and Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare) as an audition to direct a Bond film, and they close with a bit on how streamers' opaque accounting lets expensive flops like this (and Ghosted, Argylle) avoid ever being publicly branded as bombs. Before any of that, the opening third is classic Sub-Beacon banter: Mike hosting solo-cohost duties on Bond-in-Broadway-style tangents, JVL's extended rant about the Tony Awards and the real-estate economics that make Broadway theaters a historical accident, Sonny's long "dad win" story about tricking his daughter into loving the band Beach Bunny and taking her to a concert (contrasted with his wife taking her to a much pricier, worse-seated Taylor Swift show), Mike's bit about weaponizing Tenacious D's "Tribute" against his kids' obsession with "Lava Chicken" from the Minecraft movie (only to discover the video isn't as clean as he thought), and a shared complaint about entitled boomers cutting in line at a coffee shop and a Lowe's garden center, which spirals into a debate about tone versus etiquette. They also cover the box office (Lilo & Stitch holding at number one, Ballerina underperforming relative to its cost) before closing with JVL's story of scoring an ice cream sundae cart in the Red Sox owner's box.
From the show notes
It's a Guy Ritchie movie! Kinda!
Full transcript
Sonny00:00:00And which genius will explain to me why I'm here keep the cat in the bag until I release it. Yeah, great. We're looking for the fountain of youth. Oh, please. No, I just say about the cat in the bag cat wasn't happy in the bag.
Mike00:00:20Welcome to the sub beacon podcast. I am your co host Mike Warren. Joining me as always are my two co hosts who love adventures or something. Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Join us over at sub beacon.com. Tell your friends and family if they want to listen to this show and all of our other amazing shows. They've got to do it at sub beacon.com. They've got to become a patron. Join the conversation in the comments. Again, tell your friends and family sub beacon.com. We're going to be talking about the fountain of youth later on in the show. But first, let's hear how everyone is doing. JVL, do you want to talk about the Tonys?
JVL00:01:08I mean, I watched a little bit of the Tonys this weekend. I don't know if you boys are dialed into the Tony Awards the way we are. Can't say I am. And, uh, I would just, uh, this is why they hate us. And I don't want to get too political. I don't want to get too political. But the Tonys are the most batshit insane award shows ever.
Mike00:01:37Question. And, uh, question before you move on. The Tonys are for just musicals or all stage productions. So there are things on Broadway that are not musicals.
JVL00:01:50Yes. Yes. Yes.
?00:01:50Yes.
JVL00:01:50Yes. In fact, the big winner. Good night and good luck. George Clooney's show, uh, which closed on Broadway the night before the Tonys. And then he won all the things.
Mike00:02:01But so, okay. So the non-musical plays are also play on Broadway and also. Okay. Okay. Yes. See, you learned something or I do at least.
JVL00:02:08And it was, uh, man, you know, it's funny cause I've really gotten into Broadway since moving to, to the New York city area. And, uh, the Tonys are a reminder of why I always hated it.
?00:02:20Explain.
JVL00:02:50disciplinary. That's all this ever is. The theater owners are just real estate moguls. And like the idea that there's almost no consideration of the arts in it. It is very, very different from movies in that way. Explain that because so the theaters, the theaters themselves, the actual buildings, the actual buildings are the most valuable piece of real estate. And they tend to exist. They have to be in clusters. Right. But they have to in order. For the industry to work aqua industry, there has to be a cluster of these things. You can't just have, like, the one theater in Washington, the one theater in Chicago. Right. You need a place where there are like 20 of them, because that's how the economy works in attracting enough people to work the jobs within them and to to keep things moving. And, you know, Broadway exists because of a couple of families who bought up theaters. And then kept them open and kept the real estate during the Great Depression. And so you've got these big old buildings, and it really is just an accident of business history that the Broadway scene exists in New York. And if something were to happen in that stretch of Manhattan, that like, you know, six block, like, you know, an atom bomb went off there for some terrible or there was a, you know, a flood or something destroyed. Broadway would be gone. And it would never come back because those theaters could never those theaters are not economically productive enough to grab those pieces of real estate now in the way that they were able to exist in the past.
Mike00:05:07And that feels like it's true for a lot of things about Manhattan, right? I mean, that that this is the case that maybe not sort of industry wide, but there's just a lot of things. A lot. A lot of people own things in Manhattan that were something like a disaster to happen. They couldn't own it anymore in a in in like a pretty dramatic way.
JVL00:05:31Yeah. I mean, you see this when you walk around Manhattan, you know, you'll see like a little souvenir shop that's three stories tall that you think, well, how much revenue is this place really taking in on a weekly basis versus what the costs are to keep it running versus what the underlying land costs are? Right. You know. How much could that that air lot fetch if somebody wanted to build a building on top of it?
Mike00:05:56I mean, I just assume that's it's it's mob connected. But I mean, it's not New Jersey, but, you know, very possibly.
JVL00:06:05Anyway, it's all watching these these artists celebrating themselves in dress like, you know, like dudes in spangly dresses with like full face makeup. Like, I mean, and just thinking to myself, this is only there. Because that company happens to own that piece of real estate. If if if it was possible for the for the Marriott Corporation or Chalk and Gibbs or whatever the the dominant real estate player in that neighborhood is to convert that space into office space, which would be much more profitable for them. They would do it in a heartbeat.
Sonny00:06:45I do wonder it's it's interesting to think about what would happen to Broadway. If it went if there was some sort of horrible fire or, you know, if like a sinkhole opened up and just, you know, ate that that six block radius, because I do think there would be there would be a there would be a real push to bring those back as theaters in some form. Right. Like there were you would have people in New York who would be like, we need this as an economic driver, as like part of the city, the history of the city. This is where. You know, people would come to pursue their dreams, et cetera, et cetera. But it would definitely they would definitely be like mixed use theaters. Right. It would be like a theater and then a super skinny apartment building on top of it. Like, you know, like right. Like that would that's what would happen.
JVL00:07:38Yeah. Anyway, that's all. It was funny.
Mike00:07:40And the Tonys are terrible.
Sonny00:07:43All right.
Mike00:07:43Well, thanks. Thanks for that update. So you watch the Tony. So I don't have to. Sonny, what's going on with you?
Sonny00:07:49I did not watch. The Tonys. I did not. I'm shocked. There was not a thing.
Mike00:07:53Hold on real quick. What what is the Tony? Like, I know the Oscars is because that's the name of the statue. The Emmys has something like what is the Tony name come from? I have no idea. OK, I'll effort this while Sonny talks.
Sonny00:08:07I could make a series of homophobic jokes here, but I won't. I will. I will refrain. The people like the people like theater. I I had a real. So I had a real. A parenting W, a real dad win this past week.
JVL00:08:25So I, you know, before you go, the Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway.
Mike00:08:31All right. All right. I'm bored. That's already boring. Tony. All right. Thank you. That's it. I appreciate it.
Sonny00:08:37But yeah, it's less Antoinette, a.k.a. Tony. Interesting. Tony. The way that big, big, big, big win this this week for me. So I, I'm not a music guy. I'm like not a musical theater guy, but I'm also not really a music guy. Like, as you guys know, I'm not I don't listen to a lot of new music, but I've been trying to change that with we got we got the new car and it had this serious XM. And so I kept it. I kept the I kept the subscription going. It was like 20 bucks a year or something for the first two years. I was like, all right, they'll jack it up on me and I'll have to cancel it, whatever. But for these first couple of years, it's fine. And I've been listening to a lot of XMU, which is the indie. The like new indie rock station, right? Like I listen to a lot of lithium, which is the 90s alternative station. And I have a Pearl Jam radio and like pop rocks. But like the one I listen to the most right now and usually when I'm listening to the radio is XMU, which is the indie rock station. And there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff on there that's like kind of interesting. Some of it I like, some of it I don't like. But there's there was one band that they've been playing a lot called Beach Bunny, which is like kind of a chick rock group, like not not quite paramour or less emo than paramour
Mike00:09:58or.
Sonny00:09:59Yeah. Well, it's like less it's less it's less punk punk rock, more like I don't even I again, I'm not like a music. I don't know. I don't really know how to describe it, but it's like pretty straightforward, like guitar, bass, drums, music with with female lead singer. And I like I dig it. They good, good, good music. Uh, and here's and so I was like, I just was was Googling the banks. I was trying to find like albums to listen to, because usually when I find a band, I like listen to all of their stuff because that's that is your complete how my that's how my musical brain works. And I saw that they were coming to Dallas in like this was, I don't know, three months ago, four months ago. I saw that they were coming to Dallas and I was like, oh, that's interesting. And they were playing in a cool venue that I hadn't been to. I kind of wanted to check out and I was like, I would like to go to this, but I knew I would not. My wife would not have any interest in this. And I would like I'm not going to be able to ask like one of my like dad friends to go to this show is not is not like this is not a so I was like, I get it like Metallica came and I almost like got one of the one of the you know, one of my son's friends on the phone was like, hey, you want to go see Metallica at AT&T Stadium? The tickets were insane. They were like $600 or something. I was like, no, I'm not. I don't like Metallica. I don't like it that much anyway. So I was like, I kind of I want to I kind of want to see this band. They're very good. I enjoy their music, but I'm not going to go by myself and my wife's not going to go. But maybe and here the wheel started turning in my brain, the wheels, the wheel, the cogs started slowly forming a plan that would play out over the next several months and it played out to perfection. One day we were in the car. We're listening to music. And my daughter was like, Hey, can you turn on Taylor Swift? Because, you know, I've got my, you know, prime music, whatever. And she listens. And I was like, how about this? I've been listening to this band on the radio. I've heard them on the radio a couple of times. They sound a lot like Taylor Swift. Do you want to you want to listen to them?
JVL00:12:07She said, Dad, radio.
Sonny00:12:09She was like, No, she was she hates having the radio on because it's like new music she doesn't like. But I was like, it's this, you know, you've heard them, too. They sound kind of like Taylor Swift. You know, it's like it's Taylor Swift. But a little more a little more rock. And she was like, No, I don't want to listen to that. I want to listen to Taylor Swift. I was like, we're going to listen to this.
Mike00:12:27And so she complained over on her.
Sonny00:12:29She complained. She complained for like a minute and then she stopped and then she started listening. And then like two or three minutes after that, she was like, Dad, can you turn it up a little bit? And as the hook was set, the hook was set. And from that from that point on, you know, I played a little bit in the car and I can see. I can see what is being played on the account elsewhere in the house. And I see that she's listening to Beach Bunny on her Amazon Echo in her room. It's like the only piece of technology she owns is like a child's Echo that connects to the music account. But the but I could see she's listening to it. So the hook the hook is in deeper now and about and and I I didn't I didn't even ask. I just bought tickets to the show. Great seats by it was at the Echo. The Echo Music Lab. Lounge in Dallas. We had we were in the balcony area. We had a front row like balcony seat like as the you know, in terms of linear distance probably like 80 feet from the stage like it was less than that. Maybe I don't know it was but it was it was they were they were perfect seats. I mean just just amazing. So I bought the tickets and just held on to them and like a week before the show I was like I have some news you've been listening to Beach Bunny a lot they're playing here. In Dallas and I got us tickets and she was so excited and she was she was and we went and she was super into it we went to dinner beforehand I was gonna go I was gonna take her to like you know like a nicer restaurant kind of around that area but she saw a Denny's as we were driving in she was like I want to go to the Denny's and I was like fine we'll go to the Denny's. Always open. Got got two grand slams went to this concert had a fine time that was it was months in planning but it all worked out big win big W for me and I enjoyed the show the show was great great good music you know it was a lot of energy sold out it was sold out it was
Mike00:14:31great. Father of the year that's that's uh.
Sonny00:14:33It was big it was a big win this is and this is the fun thing about having kids is that you can trick them into liking things and making them think it's their own their own decision to enjoy them but really it's not they don't they don't have much say in it.
Mike00:14:49So easy to manipulate yeah was this her first concert as JVL asked.
Sonny00:14:53No she went to uh she actually saw Taylor Swift in uh when she was in Dallas.
JVL00:14:59What?
Sonny00:15:00Yeah we got.
JVL00:15:01That's Father of the Year those are the two thousand dollar tickets.
Sonny00:15:04My wife that was all my wife and my wife's friends they got the tickets and they got the tickets like just when they went on sale through Ticketmaster they didn't even have to it didn't even cost thousands of dollars it just cost hundreds of dollars for like nosebleed seats. That AT&T stadium like I you know the Cowboy Stadium is pretty big yeah and they were all the way at the top they were literally like you could like touch the roof top of the of the stadium.
Mike00:15:30This one but this one is much more I mean the one that you took her to much more intimate much more you should.
Sonny00:15:36Much better. Yeah much better. Much better concert much better like in terms of in terms of you know being able to actually see the the music and kind of interact with the band and stuff you know.
Mike00:15:46Well it's funny you you fun it's funny you mentioned like the influence. You can have on on your on the music that your kids are listening to and and and sort of try to shape them or move them in a direction and because this happened in the last few weeks I was so sick of hearing them ask Alexa to play Lava Chicken from the Minecraft movie like oh yeah it's just just constantly on like is it even a song it's like 20 seconds exactly but they're they're they just keep singing and it's like you know every fourth grade boy and girl probably is like singing anyway and I was so annoyed and I was like but like I get why because Jack Black is like he he's catchy he knows how to do catchy stuff so I had the brilliant idea of playing for them some actual good Jack Black singing which is the what I recall as being really the only clean Tenacious D song which is Tribute if you remember that song Sonny. Sure sure. The Tribute to the greatest song in the world and I found the video which is the music video which is online on YouTube and it's great and it's very funny and Dave Grohl plays the demon and there's a little cameo from Ben Stiller in it and it's very great and funny and I could tell that my boys were sort of like intrigued by the whole thing and then they started asking Alexa to play that song by Tribute by Tenacious D but I didn't realize I overheard them listening to it is that the music video is clean. The oh yeah no the other one is not now it is relatively clean. There are basically two in there are two uses of the word fuck in the song. That's not clean in my house but they're they're they're interspersed in the scatting that Jack Black does like toward the end of the song so like if you don't if you're not like ready to hear it you you don't hear that necessarily some but I've but like they're like playing it with like the two-year-old and they're all like jumping around and he's and Jack Black's like oh this was a mistake anyway that is not what I wanted to talk about what I wanted to mention was I I don't want to devolve into because I feel like the lowest form of podcasting is probably like Larry David esque complaining about how people don't realize we live in a society but I don't have anything else to discuss except this moment that happened and some other moments I I I feel like you have a series of moments well it's not just my mom I have one moment and then a friend of mine shared his similar moment and I think you know we just need one more there's a trend but I'm I'm I'm gonna say and and and this is in no offense to any of our boomer listeners but I feel like the boomers like like we need to have a talk like there's a problem like you guys are you guys are failing to uphold social norms uh at far too young an age like you are not old enough boomers to be just like barreling through life and doing and saying whatever you want yet like you got you got like another few years before we get there so my experience was this week I was at I I went went into a coffee shop to get a little writing done um a small little uh coffee shop with uh a narrow place to line up at the counter there's only one person in front of me at the counter nobody behind me and this woman that again I don't mean to stereotype but like she is the only way I could describe my wife figured out a good way to describe her she's like an Arlington woman like a boomer of a certain age with like kind of a hippie vibe but also like a lot of intensity anyway she walks in a very recognizable type in Northern Virginia and she like walks in like extremely excited like she's like got somewhere to be like she has questions that need to be answered and there is a line that she is not anticipating so she gets a line behind me she's almost like bouncing she's like so like excited and then as soon as the guy who orders in front of me like is done and like steps aside and I'm about to walk up and give my order to the barista this woman goes excuse me um I just need to know uh how much are those big containers of coffee like the big ones that have all a lot of coffee in it and the woman's like behind the counter goes uh they're they're twenty dollars and she goes oh okay I'll wait as if she's doing me a favor by waiting to complete her order for one of these giant things I'm like I'm next in line what are you talking about like this is the rudeness you will you will wait you will wait like there's no debate here like you are stating a fact you were not with this is not a negotiation here um so I'm like our age and then like I don't know what to say like there's nothing to say like what am I supposed to say here uh and so I just went in order and it was fine it ended up being fine but I shared this with a group of my friends and a friend of mine
Sonny00:21:15said thank you you should have you should have thanked her for letting you complete your transaction thank you ma'am thank you for letting me do the thing
Mike00:21:23that it was my right to do um but my friend said he was at uh he was at a uh a large um was it I think it was Lowe's he was at Lowe's and he was at the register in the garden section purchasing mulch bags of mulch um and he was like in the middle of the transaction with the cashier when a older man out of nowhere completely interrupts like a conversation uh walks like in from the outside to ask about the price of a flower and everyone's like you know the cashier's like okay I'll answer but like something's going on here we're like the boomers are do they feel like they're running out of time here and they've got to just like ask the question they need to ask and it doesn't matter who's in line
Sonny00:22:18sorry I don't understand what I I don't understand what happened he was checking the price of the
Mike00:22:25flower right he's like hey how much does this flower I'm holding cost while there's a line of people and uh a customer in the middle of an interaction with a cashier you think that's that doesn't that doesn't that doesn't qualify as a problem I don't know I mean I I think it's a border
JVL00:22:48like if if there is no other employee within like the garden section sure right uh or within the coffee shop right and it's not clear demarcated and you're not asking to jump to stop the transaction you're just saying hey excuse me I'm sorry do you know what the price is on this or uh I'm sorry to interrupt um do how much is the big coffee because at that point you're trying to decide do I get in line to buy the big coffee is it forty dollars or is it twenty dollars is this flower two dollars or twenty three dollars I I think I mean there are there are less polite and more polite ways to do that but so long as the interaction can proceed the existing interaction between customer and and merchant can continue because it is a limited duration it's not a series of questions sure how much is this flower okay where is this flower sourced from now do you know how big this is going to grow is there a guarantee on this like that then but if it's a simple one-off I'm sorry I need a price check on this because there aren't enough employees I think any of us having been on the other side of that would say should that person have to wait seven people in line for thirteen minutes to ask a price check question that really is just a two second answer that doesn't interrupt the flow of the existing transaction
Mike00:24:18i don't know am i wrong maybe i'm wrong okay boomer um no maybe you're right look i maybe i'm hypersensitive maybe but it seems to me that interrupting people who are speaking in order to uh in order to get information or or ask a question or or whatever it is that uh a little bit of patience could get you that same answer in a couple of minutes it just seems that it seems that there's again i'm spotting a trend here people are trying to jump the line jump out of turn so that they can convince themselves whether or not but that's
JVL00:25:05everybody else it's a transaction line and you trying to get enough information to know should i be part of the transaction line yeah right it's a so you guys ideally the business would have one person who was working the uh one person handling the register and one person handling the espresso machine and they could just pot instead of interrupting the line they could say to the the barista and making the espresso hey i'm sorry to bug you right how much is that giant coffee thing right ideally there'd be some other home depot employee uh tending to the garden
Mike00:25:40center that you go to them and say hey which i don't know again like i don't know the details
JVL00:25:44of that right like there could have been and if this is the case where there were 15 other home depot employees and this guy could have asked anybody but instead he just went to the first one he saw right who was in the middle and interrupt that's why i say this is I can see this both ways well I will again there are polite ways and impolite ways sure that's right you or I might make that interruption in a much more excuse me I know this is an inconvenience to you both I I'm terribly sorry right you need to know how much is that thing great thank you so much bye we just did the whole thing in under five seconds right um and there are rude ways in which you go excuse me excuse me right yes hi my name is frank rizzo okay so all right I hear
Mike00:26:28what you're saying firestein over yeah speaking of broadway sizzle chest so uh okay I I see what you're saying I I'm I'm still of the belief I again I was not at the lows where my friend had this experience he seemed to think it was a similar experience to mine I can say from my own experience that the difference between so if I had been in this woman's situation right if the roles had been reversed I came in needing to know whether this big carton of coffee was going to cost me $20 or $50 and that the answer to that question would determine what I was going to to do whether I would be a customer or not and there's one person in front of me in line I'm wait I'm waiting how long could their how long could their interaction possibly take again situational are you are
JVL00:27:18you pressed for time are you already 20 minutes late to your kid's softball your kid's baseball game where you're the sounds supposed to show up with coffee sounds like a personal problem to me
Mike00:27:27sounds like it you need it may sound like a personal problem but on the other hand if you
JVL00:27:31say got up and your your car tire was flat and uh you need to get your neighbor to help that never higher uh and like things happen then again if if this is a normal just uh you get all the time in the world it's a normal saturday afternoon what the hell does it matter to you if you wait for an extra two minutes sure but i can see again extenuating surface i think this is not a black and white i think this is a situational i'll say go ahead sonny what i
Sonny00:27:58think i think what is annoying mike about his situation is is not even the asking the question i think if if she had just asked the question like hey how much are those big coffee things and they had given her the answer and she said okay you would have been you'd have been i think fine with it i don't think it i don't think it would have i think that what would annoy you was her being like okay i'll wait my turn like sounding aggrieved she wasn't she didn't sound
Mike00:28:25aggrieved she sounded like she was being gracious by allowing what was clearly the next the next
Sonny00:28:34customer uh business interaction it's a tonal it's a tonal thing you you were annoyed by her tone i
Mike00:28:40was annoyed i was annoyed by the entitlement the entitlement that nobody else nobody else in this universe in in her in this mini universe that that she has just walked into mattered she needed to have an answer to this question and then she was gracious enough to step back and allow things to happen as they needed to happen and i find that to be uh indicative of uh of an attitude that i find um disturbingly more prevalent which is like people marching in and thinking they they're the only ones who matter but they're the main character this is this is like you remember
Sonny00:29:22several months back i guess last year actually it's been it's been a while when i was talking about that that weird stoplight in my neighborhood oh yeah i remember like is like it goes it comes out of a it comes out of like a side street and from the middle lane you can either go left straight or right right and and i know when i'm coming from the other direction uh that that that is that is always a problem because half the time people just gun it and make their left even though i have the right of way going straight through there and i i i know this is a problem so i always kind of go through slowly expecting people to do it and then a lady did it breaking the law like cause almost causing a big accident if i hadn't been paying attention probably would have caused a big accident and then she gave me the like what are you doing look and i wanted to fucking murder her on the street i wanted to like drag her from her vehicle and because like whatever i like people that's tricky it's a tricky light people make mistakes i understand it i myself have probably like messed that up before like i get it it's the it's the like the idea that she couldn't possibly have been in the wrong it's her her presumption that she was right that drove me actually crazy okay i think like that yes i think there's some
Mike00:30:42similarity to these situations and that it's in the it's all in the way it's done but i take your you know what this JVL this conversation has helped me realize i need to i need to extend a
JVL00:30:54little more grace to people in these trying times on the other hand like i i 100% understand the tonal ways in which somebody doing the exact same thing could make you like want to be like go fuck yourself right it really is 100% about the details right is somebody polite and uh accommodating or are they entitled and domineering uh you know you could see a
Mike00:31:24betty white version of this where oh i'm so sorry young man to interrupt but i'm trying to figure out how much that coffee containister is right they'd be like oh look at her she's so sweet i
JVL00:31:36love her she's great totally and then there is the karen like you know excuse me right excuse me
Mike00:31:42right yeah right i see i hear you okay i hear you brother well thanks thanks for hearing me out on this let's move on though and talk about the box office because we should talk about number one once again at the box office lilo and stitch uh 32 million dollars last weekend it's totaling 335 million dollars um a little less than 50 percent drop from the week before it's on week three but the other big news is that the john will wick not sequel it's like a saga spin off spin off yeah from the world of john wick ballerina uh coming in at number two 24 and a half million dollars in its opening weekend do we have any thoughts on any of this
JVL00:32:31i just have a question have either of you seen ballerina yes okay does she show her tits in it no okay that's why it made 24 million dollars makes sense makes i mean i just don't know what like it's an anna darmus movie where she's not naked okay why would anybody go see that
Sonny00:32:47uh i uh no i mean the the uh it's interesting because ballerina uh i'm sorry from the world of john wick colon ballerina gross 24.5 million dollars and furiosa colon a mad max saga gross like 26.5 million dollars something like that when it was released and if i had to i like it's small sample size small sample size but like there's there's probably a lesson to be learned here about taking a spin-off of a series and you know making it like there there are two there are two pots you don't why would you make a spin-off of a series that costs more than the original first of all that terrible terrible decision um this movie was very expensive it was like 90 million dollars with with reshoots or something like that i think um uh but also just like if you take a series and you uh then you're like what if we made the lead the the the tertiary uh woman from the story it's not it's not gonna work that just doesn't i don't think i don't think that's a i don't think that's a winning strategy for movie uh studios going forward so
JVL00:33:57maybe don't don't do that um counterpoint yeah i really really want a john wick spin-off with
Sonny00:34:04donnie yen maybe i mean that could be good he was in the character he was in the fourth one right
JVL00:34:11yeah he's the blind the blind and he was fantastic in it and i think the whole movie i
Sonny00:34:17was just like i want more time with this guy donnie yen's great i donnie yen is donnie yen is great uh but yeah i i mean that that could be good again like the real issue here is don't spend 90 million dollars on a movie like this you spend like 40 million dollars on a movie like this
JVL00:34:32and and then you'll be all right ballerina directed by chad uh well so so it was directed
Sonny00:34:39by len weissman who's the guy who made uh the underworld movies with kate beckinsale i think he's married to kate beckinsale all of those directives no the well the first no i think they were all in theaters i think all those movies went to theaters yeah okay um but uh he directed it and apparently it was terrible uh and did not work at all so chad stileski came in and reshot my understanding i i have no idea i don't know for sure my understanding is chad stileski came in and basically reshot all the action sequences which is a large portion of the movie obviously and i think they added a big sequence with john wick himself at the end of the movie because it just is kind of jammed in there it makes no sense in the timeline of this series so keanu reeves is in this movie he's in the movie he's in so this movie is set during during the events of john wick three and like i think kind of after john wick three so like in theory at the end of john wick three john wick is shot and he's like hiding in the sewers training except now he's like just kind of rolling rolling into this middle european town where the last third of the movie is set and doing things like it doesn't make it doesn't make any sense but it was very obvious that the uh movie was a disaster they needed to bring in keanu and john wick to to make it not to make it less of a disaster but all right um
Mike00:36:05any other thoughts on the box office nah well let's move on then and talk about fountain of youth uh sunny you want to give us a big boy review of this uh
Sonny00:36:16this movie fountain of youth so i watched fountain of youth 10 days ago i think maybe maybe nine days and i'm gonna try to i'm gonna try to remember the plot of the movie without without looking at the wikipedia page good luck fountain of youth starring john krasinski as uh drake from the uncharted video games uh is uh he's he's a explorer slash adventurer he's looking for artifacts he's like indiana jones but you know also not quite and he's got he is in uh thailand i think i think he's in thailand maybe some other some other south asian
JVL00:37:01nation it's definitely what he's doing there it's definitely bangkok he's he's in bangkok okay see
Sonny00:37:07i was probably not doing some illegal sex tourism he's he's in bangkok he's not doing illegal sex tourism he's doing he's doing illegal painting stealing he's stolen a painting from a from a criminal and the criminals thugs are chasing him but he escapes with the aid of eyes or he escapes from the thugs and also from isaac gonzalez who has become part of the guy richie repertory uh school which i am in favor of big fan of isaac gonzalez here anyway uh he he has this painting because he's trying to find the fountain of youth and to find the fountain of youth he needs more paintings because there are paintings it's kind of like national treasure but instead of declaration of independence it's renaissance paintings i think they're mostly renaissance paintings anyway he has to find more of the paintings and to do this he gets his sister who's played by natalie portman to help him find the paintings and with the paintings and the aid of a billionaire who's played by uh admiral hucks they go uh on they go to egypt and he's a good guy right
JVL00:38:16though domald gleason is a good guy in this movie sure for well for the first part huh and
Sonny00:38:23then he turns into a bad guy and then they go they go to uh they go from they go to egypt and they find the fountain of youth oh no first i'm sorry first i forgot there's a big there's a big set piece on a boat they got to raise a boat with the lusitania big air air bladders they got to raise the lusitania just which which by the way i feel like i feel like if somebody was out there raising the lusitania like breaking apart the lusitania and grave robbing the lusitania from paintings there there would be like an international outcry about this i feel like if you were out it like the lusitania is kind of a big deal i feel like it's real it's famous ship people know what's going on people only care about jim cameron jim cameron went to the north atlantic or wherever the titanic is and like just started bringing up pieces of it with air bladders people would be fucking pissed off and i think i think that this is uh i think this is also true of of the lusitania anyway they have this there's a fun action set piece on the lusitania which is sinking which is simultaneously being raised and kind of sinking um again isaac gonzalez shows up big fan thumbs up on isaac gonzalez uh they go uh they get they get more paintings and interpol which in the imagination of every screenwriter in hollywood interpol is like european fbi i think they're like interpol interpol is a fascinating thing because interpol is really just like guys on computers sending information to each other it's it's not they're not like it's not the fbi it's not they don't have jurisdiction over like all of europe and like parts of africa and asia they like your interpol is just like busting into places like hey you're coming with me and and they all wear trench coats what what is that what is the deal with the trench coats well it is a guy routine movie so they do look very stylish the one guy has a great burberry uh trench coat i believe which they comment on and there was a comment on it in the movie and that's how you know it's a guy richie movie anyway uh they go to they go to then they go to africa they go or they go to egypt and they find
Mike00:40:26the fountain of youth nope nope nope you're you're you're forgetting the the stop in vienna
Sonny00:40:30what happened in vienna in the museum in the library oh that's right there's a there's a they they go to vienna and they have to get the bible that tells people to commit the bible they got to get the wicked bible i didn't that's a real thing apparently yes yes that's a real thing i wish i had a wicked bible they sound very cool anyway uh yeah i forgot about that they escaped from the library they do like a it's it's kind of like a it's not quite an indiana jones three thing where they're you know trying to find things and they just go into a room yeah there's really there's really a lot of like just going into rooms in this movie which is which is kind of it kind of defeats the purpose of the treasure hunting until they get to the great pyramid of giza and then they start blowing things up to get into rooms and they're and john krasinski's like no this violates the ideals or no natalie portman is like no this violates the ideals of grave robbing that we do and john krasinski is like let's do a little bit of this at first i like we got we got time constraints here we got interpol on our tail interpol is going to show up with all their guns so we got to get we got to get to the fountain of youth they get to the fountain of youth and it turns out that donald gleason is bad admiral hucks is a bad guy he wants he's a billionaire so you know he's bad first of all and he just it and like this is very this is very briefly hinted at that he's not actually in the in the movie he's supposed to be sick and he's trying to find the fountain of youth to get better and this is kind of briefly hinted that that's not the case when he beats up i uh what did he does he beat up the interpol guy or was it the the thug i think it was a thug i think it was a thug it was a criminal thug he's like good days and bad days and people are like oh look at this this is weird doesn't he isn't he a crippled dying person but no he can do the he can do karate uh anyway um they get to the fountain of youth and dom hall gleason who again is a billionaire and that's evil wants the thing so he can live forever but he doesn't understand that you sacrifice somebody you love but if you don't love anybody else it creates the feedback loop an energy feedback feedback loop and then he dies uh anyway uh long story short they all learn a very valuable lesson about the family of youth which is you don't tamper with the fountain of youth because that does bad things anyway uh here's my base i i'll say look i'm making fun of the movie because it's like it's incredibly generic and the script doesn't really make any sense and like it it also just doesn't entirely work as this sort of indiana jones tomb raider adventure movie because like i say it's just a lot of like they just like walk into places a lot of the time there's not like a lot of discovery it's like they're just going they're just going to rooms and houses and museums and such um i will say that the movie was a million times more entertaining than it had any right to be or that i expected it to be i was i went in very i had very low expectations on this and i went in and i was like oh this is actually this is competently shot because guy richie knows how to make a fucking movie um it it's it was stylish enough without being like stylized it wasn't you know it wasn't uh it wasn't like lockstock and two smoking barrels or snatch or it's like it's it's a pretty straightforward action movie where it just like looks good and there's a couple of like fx scenes towards the end that that you know ramp things up a little bit but the uh but it it's like it it it moves along goes from scene to scene i like john krasinski i like natalie portman i like isaac gonzalez uh i like everybody and i like i like admiral hucks i like all the actors in this movie it was entertaining enough for what it was which is a 200 million dollars straight to tv movie like i like i don't understand the economics of any of this none of it makes any sense to me um but you know if i just want to blow some some if i want to spend an evening just you know kind of watching tv that was a perfectly acceptable way to do it that's my that's my review of the fountain of youth jvl and perfectly acceptable they should have called it inter national treasure
JVL00:44:45i mean it's just it's just national treasure yeah but like just national treasure not about america and so not as good well yes it's it's fine it's fine it's fine i don't know what else so much about this mystifies me one is the budget i mean this is this is not that far off from costing what a mission impossible movie costs and it looks like okay but it doesn't look like a mission impossible movie like it is you know you are a step down uh i don't know i don't understand why this exists i don't understand why guy ritchie is becoming a director for hire of direct to streaming things when he was once upon a time this incredibly uh
Mike00:45:27as you say stylish and really inventive director who people waited for and
JVL00:45:34yeah and now it's just like yeah he's doing a thing for apple tv premium plus
Sonny00:45:40so i have i actually have a theory about this i actually have a theory as to what he has been doing both with this movie and the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare which is was his was his previous one my theory on uh guy ritchie making these two movies more or less back to back is it is him saying to the guys running the bond franchise look i can do regular generic action i can i can make your bond movie for you let me make your bond movie give it to me i do think that i i i think he really i do think he actually really wants to make it one but he also knows that like the guy who made snatch and lock stock and two smoking barrels yeah and even like the man from uncle like that's not the guy they want for that franchise too risky but he got he has these movies now and they're and look again like ministry of ungentlemanly warfare i didn't love it i i found it kind of boring uh but it but it's perfectly it's like again stylish without being stylized it looks good it's it's it's fine you know this movie again looks fine uh it was it's entertaining enough um it looks good enough yeah i don't i understand the john
JVL00:46:51krasinski thing so he has more money than god because he owned a piece of quiet place right and so he this is one of those things where you know i think he walked away from quiet place with the kind of money that tom cruise makes from a mission impossible movie like you know he just he has his fuck you money why why is he doing something like this and when did natalie portman become a forgettable actress i i mean she's just boring on screen am i wrong like it just feels like an absolute replacement she's natalie portman she's famous we all sort of know her we've grown up with her like okay like she's a familiar face but she doesn't do anything interesting i think aiza gonzalez honestly is a way more interesting screen presence at this point in her career than
Sonny00:47:45well the aiza gonzalez gonzalez role is also just more interesting because it's kind of mysterious like what is she doing what's her deal you know and like with with natalie portman she's like she's she's basically like here's here's a mom yeah there's a mom who likes arts like natalie
JVL00:48:02portman was like a really interesting young actress and i think she just hasn't been in a very very long time not a bad actress not bad i don't this isn't a like i don't know like so anna
Mike00:48:15armis anna de armis is interesting on screen yes like in everything she's in and uh like i'm not
JVL00:48:22joking about the nudity like i just think like there's she's unbelievably charming think about that the little bit of work she does in whatever the bond movie was that she was in yeah yeah no time to die was that no time and you know that's like the best 12 minutes in the entire movie and it's because of her yeah you know she has an energy to her and a presence and she's she'll hit things a little unexpectedly uh she made knives out tolerable yeah i i just don't understand i mean when's the last time natalie portman did anything on screen
Sonny00:48:55that was unexpected you know vox lux is interesting but that you know that was a while ago now yeah
JVL00:49:02six years and here's my my last my last criticism is like can we please have one of these movies where the dom hall gleason character isn't the bad like wouldn't that be kind of fun the twist is is that the the billionaire who has been cast as an actor who's always a heel who you're the whole time you're like oh this guy's gonna turn in the end like it's actually just yeah he's on the good guy side that would be a really cool twist yeah oh oh son of a bitch sean bean is actually one of the good guys here you know this is not that sort of movie this is not a movie
Sonny00:49:39you should not expect interesting things out of this movie yeah michael did you did
Mike00:49:45you're a man of the people though uh i was so bored by this movie it was so boring i did not enjoy it it felt flat i totally agree with you jvl about natalie portman which is really sad actually because i think i don't think i agree with you she's not a bad actor and um i like things that she's been in but i was sort of like why is she why is she in this movie like she just likes her crazy brother and and then goes along and like and and then deploys some extra bit of exposition or or whatever to like keep the plot moving that's like give me one off-kilter line
JVL00:50:31read just one line read that strikes it like oh why did she put the emphasis on that syllable right like one christopher walken line read out of it that's all or something yeah i don't know
Mike00:50:42and maybe there was nothing for her to do and it's a script problem i don't know i didn't i also didn't like her chemistry or lack thereof with john krasinski i didn't think there was much there and like they're supposed to be brother and sister who like are estranged but are connected by their father who was misunderstood and one went one way and one went the other and they both don't understand like i don't know like there's a lot to work
JVL00:51:07with there and it just didn't do anything for me um can i say that brother sister chemistry on screen in a movie especially when you have two very pretty people is one of the hardest things to pull off in film because the audience is trained to want those two characters to want to yeah that's right and to put them in a role in which they're not supposed to yeah different kind of movie like that's that's a hard hard thing to pull off yes i agree in order to make that work the two leads have to really connect in a very organic and fun level where you believe that they are siblings where you believe that they're siblings and that like it has to be entertaining so that all of the tension of will they won't they which can't exist in that relationship you don't notice that you're missing that's right yeah well they try to
Sonny00:52:01transfer some of that to the isaac gonzalez character correct and like she does not have very good chemistry with john no in this movie really that doesn't that doesn't work but again she's doing like kind of a she's playing the uh she's playing like the um the the again from indiana jones three from last crusade she's like the the guy with the fez in this movie yes i don't know i can't remember that character's name but she's she's the she's like the christian warrior with the fez she should wear a fez i bet that would be hot
Mike00:52:30that would be hot um more of that please um i don't know i just this was this movie was boring and i didn't like it and i thought it was derivative like it was like oh it's indiana jones and it's national treasure and it's and it's like i just don't care i i
JVL00:52:45don't care about this movie and i want to turn it off so can i so the reason national treasure worked is uh because it hits all of the fun beats in ways that this doesn't yeah and because it is anchored around a very strange and twitchy nicholas cage performance like nicholas cage is interesting on screen and he's like you know like that's there's a lot of that that era of his filmmaking yes you know energy packed into it and it makes it compelling on screen and uh like that's a very paint by numbers movie in a way it's very paint by numbers kind of quest movie but it's filled with enough dan brown stuff and you know like ah conspiracy theorism and discover that it just is fun and it's a romp well and nicholas
Mike00:53:40cage is and nicholas cage is you know like think about all those famous lines in that movie like he's they're they're delivered from nicholas cage in a very idiosyncratic nicholas cage way like i'm going to steal the declaration of independence like it's a weird it's a funny sentence and he says it both extremely seriously but also where it's like almost campy and and you're it's also like oh i'm watching nicholas cage talk about stealing the declaration of independence that's hilarious and awesome and the whole package works and there's just nothing in this and even like the like i love the idea of like the mythology of okay all these renaissance painters who were contemporaries like hid these clues in their paintings and like putting it all like it it all it had everything that should have appealed to me and in the fact that it didn't just tells me that it there was something lifeless about it and i don't know what they could have done to to make it better uh you know but it just was it did more than
JVL00:54:45work for me what's funny though is that the old guy richie who would have highly mannered performances in his movies if that was in this right if our leads in this are more like that the whole tone of the movie changes and it's better yes but it doesn't serve the purpose that's that right then all of a sudden it's more like lock you know national treasure by way of lock stock and two smoking barrel or national treasure by way of snatch yes right which i think sounds like an interesting movie and i think i don't know about you boys but i would see locks national treasure directed by the guy who did snatch sure but doesn't that doesn't that
Mike00:55:24i feel like that's what people what an audience would expect if they hear guy richie movie like like that and the fact that they don't get it that seems to be really bad for his brand i mean you
JVL00:55:38uh i like sunny's theory i think this plays into sunny's theory yeah no i mean i
Sonny00:55:45do question like how many people even first of all are even aware this movie fucking exists that's true yeah like it's on apple tv plus like you know i had never heard of it before you guys texted me apple tv plus is a great service i like it a lot but like this you know it's it is a it's a niche it's very niche uh and um again i like the economics of all this don't make any sense but i do look again i really do think he is trying to make a play for like i can be a normal responsible director of movies look at look at the aladdin movie that made a billion dollars and it wasn't it wasn't crazy look at the you know look at look at gentle ministry of ungentlemanly warfare i can do brit i can do british history and spies and stuff and you know look at look at fountain of youth that's it's exciting and big budget and we we did it responsibly whatever like i uh it i but no i think you're totally right a movie a movie where like uh the lead character is played by what's his stephen graham yeah uh or or even like a jason statham type like jason statham would never make a movie like this now because he has gotten into his own brand of you know but like him him doing that or or you he could do matthew mcconaughey right like matthew mcconaughey like from the gentleman from the gentleman yeah that would actually that would be that would you know again i like john krasinski in this movie fine i think he's he's perfectly acceptable but no he if you if you had if you had a uh a kind of weirder more mannered uh guy ritchie style performance make hugh grant the villain yeah make you grant the billionaire
JVL00:57:29villain right like it's better and have the downton abbey chick who plays matthew mcconaughey's wife as his sister or something right i mean this is you know what's her name michelle something or another yeah yeah like that all of a sudden becomes i think just a much more interesting movie
Sonny00:57:45nobody wanted this movie to be interesting i think including apple tv short of it but it's like
Mike00:57:53i okay we don't need to play with this point it's just the what are we doing here what is this all about well it all feels like a front for something that i don't understand it's money laundering
Sonny00:58:07again budget budget of 180 to 200 million dollars i just it's financially it's financially by skydance who i assume skydance has some sort of output deal with apple and like the the long and the short of it is that apple has a trillion dollars to play with like they they they have no they have no like there's no they're they have more money than god like they have the fountain
JVL00:58:33of youth somewhere and it's printing them money and like real talk how much revenue is this movie responsible for in the final accounting right they have apple like everybody else has some model where they combined like minutes watched with subscriber churn with blah blah blah blah blah blah to say that for every for every 30 seconds of streaming time for this we can equate that to 21 hundredths of a penny of revenue or something like that right 17 dollars i really think like this is i mean nobody talks about this but if we if we held everything accountable in the same way something like this would be much worse than John Carter of Mars well the entertainment strategy guy has a riff
Sonny00:59:28on this which is he calls it i forget what he called it the argyle the argyle paradox where like something like that where like you you you take a movie like argyle you put in theaters and it bombs right and everybody's like look at this fucking bomb this movie bombed oh it's a it's a horrible bomb and then it's on apple tv plus and it does probably the same numbers it would have done on apple tv plus anyway or you take flowers of the killer moon right like people or killers of the flower moon and people were much more careful about that because nobody really wants to be like martin scorsese made a nine-figure bomb but like that movie was a nine-figure like that movie did not make that movie lost nine figures for somebody somewhere um uh but you have but instead with something like this you put it straight on apple tv plus and nobody that story does not exist that there is no there is no fountain of youth is an enormous flop people just don't talk about it like there is no uh there is or with a ghosted right ghosted was their other their other movie co-written by a friend of the pod chris mckenna if you're listening great movie i love ghosted but the uh but but like again like that movie doesn't go to theaters if that movie had gone to theaters it hadn't done well you would have a whole story about it being
JVL01:00:40huge just because the opacity of the accounting right because of the exactly because you make it opaque enough then nobody can ever say you it didn't do well exactly that's the
Sonny01:00:50and that is the streaming ecosystem in a nutshell like this well that should be able to go on for
Mike01:00:55ever and ever with no consequences um all right well i i really do want to see flowers of the killer moon that sounds like a movie i want to see that would not flowers of the killer flowers of the killer moon yeah that sounds badass all right that is all the time we are going to give an episode remember to tell your friends and family that they can listen to all episodes at subbeacon.com become a patron and we'll talk to you next time
JVL01:01:23yeah so i uh i was in the boston red sox owner's box for a game last night right and i did feel a little bit like selena kyle at the fundraiser walking around looking at the look looking around at the the plate of lobster of course and the sushi and the endless dessert table the clam chowder the in the middle of the sixth inning a gentleman came over and said sir the uh the sundae bar is here i said excuse me what's that and there's a mobile ice cream sundae bar that goes from suite to suite shows up in the owner's suite it shows up midway through the sixth inning which is of course the perfect time to get an ice cream sundae of course and uh here's my question yeah what do
Mike01:02:21you think the spread looks like in the colorado rockies owner's box that boy that's like that is is it hemlock you get you get you get the privilege of buying your uh beer half off you know that's
Sonny01:02:38like it's yeah in the brewers in the brewers owner owner's box the the beer guy just shows up with a lits i'm sure it's fine
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