Movie Grade: D-

It turns out that the Tooth DOES Hurt! Little did they know their own string of pathetic puns designed to promote this movie would turn into the most perfect way to discredit it. (Shame)

In any event, I realize it wasn’t long ago that I was aching to see a formulaic comedy to help alleviate the heaviness of all of the ‘post apocalyptic’ ‘end of humanity’ films that I had to sit through towards the end of last year, but this was not what I had in mind.

If you’ve seen the trailer for this film, you’ve seen this film. There are zero surprises and zero laughs. The one thing that is unexpected about it though is the amount of quality actors that were involved in it. I mean, you have Dwayne Johnson as the lead tooth fairy which isn’t unexpected because ‘family fun’ is the direction his career is now taking, but then you also have appearances by Seth MacFarland creator of perhaps the best cartoon series ever, Family Guy, the Sound of Music icon Julie Andrews and one of the most successful comedians working today Billy Crystal rounding out the cast. How was this movie not funny??? You’d expect at least a laugh or two somewhere, but alas no. It was a laugh wasteland.

The story is simple enough, Derek Thompson (Dwayne Johnson) is a down on his luck minor league Hockey player who’s lost the ability to believe in the ‘what if’s’ in life that children especially cling to. After almost spilling the beans to his girlfriends’ (Ashley Judd) daughter that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist, Derek is drafted by the tooth fairies to become one. His sentence is two weeks duty as a tooth fairy to pay his debt to them and also reawaken his own spirit.

Every step of the formula is followed precisely; he begins as a distant tough guy then slowly learns some lessons and thinks things are better, then makes one mistake and ultimately has to fix that mistake and then everything turns out just fine and everyone’s happy. Everyone that is, except for the audience.

They say that the only way the tooth fairy will come and leave you money is if you’re fast asleep. I would give the same advice for anyone watching this film. It won’t be good unless you are completely unconscious.

I don’t like to rail against films the way most critics do so I feel bad saying these things but there was seriously nothing redeemable about this movie. Very young children may enjoy some of the special effects and the fairy costumes but their parents and

older siblings will be completely board.

My advice is to save some money this weekend and just re-watch Up on DVD. C’mon you know you either got it as a gift or bought it for yourself over the holidays! That’s a modern classic in terms of a family film. Tooth Fairy… not so much.

Movie Grade: D-

Synopsis:

A bad deed on the part of a tough minor-league hockey player (Johnson) results in an unusual sentence: He must serve one week as a real-life tooth fairy.