The new movie, “The Tooth Fairy,” is about a minor-league hockey player, Derek, played by Dwayne Johnson, nicknamed the “Tooth Fairy” for knocking so many opposing players’ teeth out. Since his athletic dreams were crushed by a shoulder injury he now believes everyone’s dreams, imagination and hopes for the future are all a huge waste of time.
After crushing an eight-year-old’s dream of becoming a professional hockey player, and almost destroying his girlfriend’s daughter’s belief of the tooth fairy, he gets a “summons” from the fairy world telling him he has to serve as a real tooth fairy for two weeks.
Despite his best efforts to avoid the job, he is assigned a fairy caseworker and fitted up with a tutu (the fairies were low on funding and were out of male fairy outfits at the time) and magic tools to help him get children’s teeth.
During the day, when he’s not acting as a Tooth Fairy, he begins encouraging his friends and rediscovering his own dreams, but he experiences more failure, which discourages him and causes him to fall back into his previous bad ways.
The acting is very well done. Johnson seems to always be great in children’s films, but my favorite character was the wingless fairy, Tracey, played by Stephen Merchant, who Derek describes as a toothpick with tuna eyes. Also, the always-great Julie Andrews plays the part of Lily, the head fairy who hates being interrupted, and country singer Ashley Judd plays Carly, Derek’s girlfriend and was believable as well. Even the kids’ acting was good.
The real point of “The Tooth Fairy” is to show kids the importance of having dreams and going after them, and even if you fail once, you can still achieve them. Although in the film Derek talks about how hard it is to reach them, he learns that he can if he works hard enough and believes in himself, and that even adults should have goals and dreams.
The movie shows that even imagination, such as believing in the Tooth Fairy, is necessary for children to develop their dreams and believe that anything is possible.
“The Tooth Fairy” is a good children’s film, and actually very entertaining. Though the plot is quite ridiculous, it’s what makes the movie as funny as it is.
Overall, it was a bit too young for my age group, but younger kids will find it very funny and amusing. It was surprisingly a fairly good film that many kids would greatly enjoy, and a good film for a family movie night.
Aran Kirschenmann, 13, is a contributing writer for the Bellevue Reporter and a eighth grader at The International School in Bellevue.
