Zahnfee auf Bewährung

Dwayne Johnson proves once again, that he is more than just muscles. And his eyebrow of course. He can jump from action into a kids movie just like that. Something a few stars in the 80s had big problems with (at least commercially speaking).

And this movie delivers. It never set out to be, the best movie in the world. It is there to entertain. And entertain it does. The viewing experience get enhanced if you watch it with teenagers or kids. They will just love the movie. And so will you, if you watch it with them.

Of course it is very predicable and it has a few other flaws too. But the charisma of Dwayne, the wit of Merchant and the overall good design of the movie, might make you forget about that. Just relax, sit back and enjoy.

This is a cute film. I enjoyed it. I think it did what it was supposed to do, it made me laugh and was easy to watch. One of the few bad things I have to say about it is that it's formulaic, a little long and you know what the outcome will be before it gets there. Regardless of that, Dwayne, Julie, Billy and the English fellow do their part to make the film worth while, while Ms. Judd and the child actors make the story come together. There's a fair amount of whimsy and reality which makes it great for children and adults who are children at heart, the little cameo by Seth Macfarlane doesn't hurt either. All it in all it's not the best, but it's not the worst.

Trying to level any serious criticism at director Michael Lembeck's Tooth Fairy is like four hardened grizzled WW II vets hand-cranking one of those rotating anti-aircraft guns with four different barrels pointing at a bunch of screaming Japanese Zeros around so they can blast an orange kitten out of a tree. Except the kitten is kind of an asshole and it's 1956 so we're not actually at war with Japan anymore, so you know... maybe it's not the worst idea in the world.

Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson plays Derek "the Tooth Fairy" Johnson, the beloved bruising left-winger on the local minor hockey team. He started as a skill player, a dangler, an offensive prospect that had his dreams dashed by a shoulder injury, and he's now happy to play a couple of minutes a night, hammer the opponents' star player, and spend the rest of the game in his custom recliner in the penalty box. He's a cartoon pragmatist, dispensing hard truths about the impossibility of dreams coming true to young hockey players wanting to be just like him.

As a result, he is summoned to Fairyland, and sentenced by head fairy Lily (Julie Andrews) to two weeks' duty as a Tooth Fairy, a real-deal winged creeper with a bat-belt full of spy gadgets and a lanky, awkward case worker with fairy aspirations of his own (Stephen Merchant, co-creator with Ricky Gervais of The Office). Lessons are learned, a whole bunch of obvious groaner gags are hatched, and everything, eventually, from a guitarist kid's fear of failure to a single mom's love to a future hockey star's cockiness and on and on is resolved in a Really Pleasant Way.

It's a kids movie, pure and simple, endlessly saccharine and full of pratfalls, Healthy Moral Lessons and magic fairy dust. It's also incredibly dull, and a massive waste of what's actually a great cast - Merchant is consistently funny and Billy Crystal is in vintage form as Fairyland's gadgetmaster Q equivalent, and Johnson is as charming as ever. Six year old kids will probably laugh their six year old heads off, but the dullness of the script, the predictability of the gags and the moral convenience and simplicity of the story is going to bore anybody not actually invested in the "ok wait is there actually a tooth fairy or not, dad" debate.

You want this film to be better, just because it could have been. It's stuffed full of legitimate talent and it remarkably doesn't feel like a cynical cash-in, it just feels diluted. It is going to accomplish its ostensibly stated goal, entertaining children, but outside of a few laughs here and there it's not going to do much for anyone else. 4/10

Even though it's for kids, this movie turned out much better than I thought it would. The Rock pulls off the role of the Tooth Fairy quite well. He plays, Derek Thompson, a hockey player known as the Tooth Fairy because he knocks a lot of teeth out. He has a girlfriend played by Ashley Judd, why her I don't know because it is a very minor role, whom has 2 kids. One night Derek almost slips up and tells the young daughter there is no tooth fairy. But her mom saves the day. That night Derek is summoned to fairy land and in a unique way is given things for fairies to use and trained to fly. I liked this part the best. Billy Crystal cameos as Jimmy, the fairy whom gives him the shrinking paste, fairy dust, etc... Amnesia dust is great.

So Derek is sentenced to 2 weeks as a tooth fairy by the head fairy, Julie Andrews. Of course, he learns valuable lessons over this time.

I also liked the parts where he goes into people's homes in various ways. It was funny, we all need invisible spray.

FINAL VERDICT: I liked it and recommend it.

When i first looked at this movie i thought along the same lines as some of the previous reviews it couldn't mount to anything special, also wondering why the likes of billy crystal put his name to it. But i decided that i would test it on my three girls its a great test as one is three, one seven, and one ten so depending on the movie we tend to lose them one by one starting with the youngest but to my surprise they all went the distance and my three year old asked for it again not twenty mins after it had finished so if you have a mixed age group wanting to watch it i hope this helps.

The movie itself isn't all that bad it has enough momentum from start to finish to keep you interested from an adults point of view.!!