← Back to Reviews
in
TOOTH FAIRY
Dwayne Johnson's ability to carry a movie was put to its ultimate test with an oddity from 2010 called Tooth Fairy, a somewhat original comedy concept that loses its way due to an overly padded screenplay from writers whom I would expect better.
Johnson plays Derek Thompson, a minor league hockey player whose best days are behind him and is a little bitter about it. Derek almost tells his girlfriend's daughter that there is no such thing as the tooth fairy and is promptly summoned to Tooth Fairy Land, where as punishment for "disseminating disbelief" regarding the tooth fairy, he is assigned tooth fairy duties for two weeks.
This story initially threw me by blowing the whole concept of the tooth fairy being a single creature completely out of the water. According to the screenplay by Lowell Hanz and Babaloo Mandel, the Tooth Fairy is a winged administrator (Julie Andrews) who runs an entire organization where tooth fairies are trained and given assignments all over the world that appear on one of those airport flight boards, telling the fairies where to go and what kind of tooth is coming in. They are also equipped with "tools" like shrinking cream, and amnesia dust to help them complete their missions, supplied by the Tooth Kingdom's own version of James Bond's M, named Jerry (Billy Crystal).
This is all well and good, but instead of keeping Derek in the fairy kingdom, they keep sending him back to his normal life and interrupting it, conveniently complicating his relationship with his girlfriend (Ashley Judd) and her son. Not to mention making an obnoxious new teammate (Ryan Sheckler) pretty impossible to deal with. It seemed to me that for the concept presented to make sense, Derek would have to remain in the kingdom for training, which was pretty non-existent. Not to mention the fact that they kept interrupting Derek to get teeth while thousands of other fairies are sitting in the fairy cafeteria doing nothing.
The film's principle theme about the death of children's belief systems is a nice one, but the writers should have been a little more forthcoming with it and not make the viewer work so hard for it. Director Michael Lembeck has a keen comic eye and he puts a lot of trust in the charm and charisma of his leading man and I have to admit if anyone but Johnson had been playing this role, I probably would have turned it off about 15 minutes in, but Johnson really commits to this hot mess of a movie and almost makes it worth your time.
Dwayne Johnson's ability to carry a movie was put to its ultimate test with an oddity from 2010 called Tooth Fairy, a somewhat original comedy concept that loses its way due to an overly padded screenplay from writers whom I would expect better.
Johnson plays Derek Thompson, a minor league hockey player whose best days are behind him and is a little bitter about it. Derek almost tells his girlfriend's daughter that there is no such thing as the tooth fairy and is promptly summoned to Tooth Fairy Land, where as punishment for "disseminating disbelief" regarding the tooth fairy, he is assigned tooth fairy duties for two weeks.
This story initially threw me by blowing the whole concept of the tooth fairy being a single creature completely out of the water. According to the screenplay by Lowell Hanz and Babaloo Mandel, the Tooth Fairy is a winged administrator (Julie Andrews) who runs an entire organization where tooth fairies are trained and given assignments all over the world that appear on one of those airport flight boards, telling the fairies where to go and what kind of tooth is coming in. They are also equipped with "tools" like shrinking cream, and amnesia dust to help them complete their missions, supplied by the Tooth Kingdom's own version of James Bond's M, named Jerry (Billy Crystal).
This is all well and good, but instead of keeping Derek in the fairy kingdom, they keep sending him back to his normal life and interrupting it, conveniently complicating his relationship with his girlfriend (Ashley Judd) and her son. Not to mention making an obnoxious new teammate (Ryan Sheckler) pretty impossible to deal with. It seemed to me that for the concept presented to make sense, Derek would have to remain in the kingdom for training, which was pretty non-existent. Not to mention the fact that they kept interrupting Derek to get teeth while thousands of other fairies are sitting in the fairy cafeteria doing nothing.
The film's principle theme about the death of children's belief systems is a nice one, but the writers should have been a little more forthcoming with it and not make the viewer work so hard for it. Director Michael Lembeck has a keen comic eye and he puts a lot of trust in the charm and charisma of his leading man and I have to admit if anyone but Johnson had been playing this role, I probably would have turned it off about 15 minutes in, but Johnson really commits to this hot mess of a movie and almost makes it worth your time.