Tooth Fairy
Right, let me say right from the outset that this is not a bad movie. Don’t worry about everybody slagging it off without seeing it because The Rock is starring in it. It is definitely a movie with a target audience and not for everyone, but that doesn’t make the picture any less worthy than any other formulaic genre movie. It’s simple to understand and far from challenging the viewer, but let’s not forget who is going to see it.
Whilst it may be highbrow or easy to point the finger at something so basic and obvious, this is a recognisable hark back to more innocent times. This fantasy falls squarely in the ‘Big’ school of film-making. Granted, the quality of the story-telling and the acting isn’t up to much, but it’s the premise we’re referring to, even if it never reaches Tom Hanks’ iconic moments jumping up and down on a larger than life piano.
When Derek Thompson (Johnson) nearly ruins one child’s fantasy about the existence of the tooth fairy, this aging minor league hockey pro, with the ever so slightly fortuitous moniker, is unexpectedly recruited against his will into Tooth Fairy lore.
Nevertheless, for all it's grown up shortcomings, it is still fun enough to sit through. The acting is not great by any of the cast especially, and Ashley Judd has once again emphasised the point that I have long held that she is not the greatest actress in the world, though given her sporadic appearances and dodgy script, this really isn't the best vehicle to display what I feel are her questionable talents.
If we suggest that the film is for the kids and not a testing childrens' film either, you get the right idea. Children's cinema can be extremely accomplished, engaging and thought provoking, though you will find none of that here. It is occasionally charming, as is Johnson, but anyone over the age of eight can sleep right through it, safe in the knowledge that they reallly haven't missed anything.
Tooth Fairy is released in the UK in May 2010
He sprouts wings one night and then finds himself confronted by Tracy, his Fairy Case Worker played aggravatedly by Stephen Merchant (the bespectacled, taller, uglier side of the Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant ‘Office’ partnership) who with aid of the Fairy Godmother (Julie Andrews) explains why he is in the position that he finds himself. Dissemination of Disbelief is his crime, and the sentence? Two weeks duty as a Tooth Fairy.
He can’t tell anyone about it, and it really wouldn’t be any other way as wings shooting up out of his clothes at inconvenient moments just wouldn’t be the same if he didn’t have to hide in bushes or lavatories to cover them up.
He meets Jerry (played by Billy Crystal) who explains some of the intricate tricks of his new found trade, like invisibility spray, shrinking cream and memory dust, all prop developments that help Johnson in his goal, to ‘get the tooth’.
As I said, this isn't as dire as it might first appear. The audience they are chasing are thankfully ignorant to the finer points of film making so we can dispense with a critique that suggests that it's not up to much in that department. It's a given, okay.
