Movie Review: "Tooth Fairy" (2010)

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Movie: "Tooth Fairy"
Director: Michael Lembeck
Year: 2010
Rating: PG
Running Time: 1 hours, 41 minutes

A hockey player named Derek 'The Tooth Fairy' Thompson (Dwayne Johnson) has a cynical outlook on life after an injury sent him from the NHL to the minor leagues.  One night at his girlfriend's house Derek starts to tell her daughter, who has just lost a baby tooth, that the Tooth Fairy is not real. This causes him to be summoned to fairy land where he is convicted of being a dream killer and sentenced to two weeks as an actual Tooth Fairy.

Directed by Michael Lembeck, "Tooth Fairy" is a family fantasy comedy starring Dwayne Johnson as hockey player Derek 'The Tooth Fairy' Thompson. He got his nickname by knocking out the teeth of his opponents on the ice. Derek has a relatively cynical outlook on life due to the fact that an injury sent him packing from the NHL back down into the minor leagues. He has a habit of crushing the hopes and dreams of children who have aspirations of being professional athletes, rock stars, or even those who believe in the tooth fairy. Jaded doesn't even begin to cut it. After he lets it slip to his girlfriend's daughter that there might not be a tooth fairy, Derek is summoned to Fairy Land, where he is sentenced to work a couple of weeks of backbreaking labor...as a tooth fairy. If you didn't think The Rock could stoop any lower in terms of his standards for picking movie roles, you were dead wrong.

We have said it many times on this here blog: Dwayne Johnson is a charming guy. He has a great, killer smile, a goofy demeanor, and it's truly difficult not to like him. But, despite all his charm, he can't really do much to help elevate "Tooth Fairy" from being an idiotic mess. It is a formulaic family redemption story that is completely by the book with no variation whatsoever. A guy with bad attitude about life and bitter about his experiences has a life-altering event happen to him and then things start to turn around until there's a big mess up, followed by a really sappy and sad bit before the ultimate redemption and a happy ending. There you go, you don't need to see the movie. We can handle a paint-by-numbers plot to an extent, so long as it has something else to fall back on, like if the characters are compelling, or the dialogue is intriguing, or if the movie is even the slightest bit funny, or if the story has some interesting twist...but here, there's nothing. None of this happens! The characters are a joke, the dialogue is full of dental puns, the jokes are as flat as a week old soda pop, and we know where the entire thing is going to go before it even starts. Sure, Johnson flashes his million dollar smile in a tutu, but it's just not enough to sustain a movie, even one intended for kids and families. They can't all be winners, we guess. The bottom line is, this film is beneath Dwayne Johnson, and Ashley Judd, and Julie Andrews, and even Stephan Merchant. We doubt anyone over the age of 12 would find "Tooth Fairy" entertaining.

My Rating: 4/10
BigJ's Rating: 3.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.0/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 18%
Do we recommend this movie: No.
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One year ago, we were watching: "Little Boy"