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Professional wrestling may have put him in the spotlight, but since leaving the ring, Dwayne Johnson (a.k.a. The Actor Formerly Known as “The Rock”) has been more of a football guy, playing football players in movies like The Game Plan and Gridiron Gang. In his latest family comedy, though, he’s lacing up his hockey skates…and gathering his fairy dust.
In Tooth Fairy, Johnson stars as Derek Thompson, a hard-hitting hockey player whose penchant for fighting earned him the nickname “Tooth Fairy.” Though his NHL days are behind him, he’s still a superstar in the minors—until the Next Big Thing shows up in the locker room. Suddenly, Derek’s lost his superstar status to some cocky young punk—and he’s more than just a little bit bitter.
When Derek takes out his frustrations by crushing kids’ dreams, however, it becomes a big problem—and, as punishment, he’s sentenced to act as a real tooth fairy for two weeks. But Derek’s got more to worry about than just his snippy new caseworker fairy, Tracy (Stephen Merchant). He’s also got to patch things up with his girlfriend, Carly (Ashley Judd), her teenage son, Randy (Chase Ellison), and his team.
For many moviegoers (especially the female ones), Johnson’s films often qualify as guilty pleasures. Whether he’s battling a bunch of bad guys or hamming it up for the kids, the stories in his films aren’t always solid, and the dialogue is generally pretty cheesy. But Johnson—with that huge, hypnotic grin and those well-toned pecs—is usually engaging enough to make his films at least…tolerable (and, at best, a whole lot of goofy fun). But Tooth Fairy crosses that all-important line between entertainingly cheesy and just plain ridiculous—and, no matter how gleaming his smile (or how huge his muscles), there’s nothing The Rock can do to save it.
Tooth Fairy is an endless mess of movie clichés. It’s part inspirational sports drama, part goofy kids’ comedy, part chick flick, and part fantasy, too. Unfortunately, though, borrowing a whole bunch of standard formulas from a whole bunch of different genres does not an original movie make. Instead, it feels as though it were written during one long, crazy, sugar-fueled all-nighter. It’s random and chaotic, and it simply tries to tell too many different stories.
Still, dressed in a pretty pink tutu and armed with a script full of bad tooth jokes, Johnson tries to make the most of it, cranking the cheese levels all the way up to 11. He manages to get a laugh or two, too—but that’s not nearly enough to make Tooth Fairy worth the trip to the theater. Even the kids at the screening (one attended by three NHLers, no less) seemed completely unenthusiastic—and that’s never a good sign.
Despite my love of hockey—and fondness for Dwayne Johnson’s cheesy grin—even I couldn’t find a whole lot to love about Tooth Fairy. Instead, I found myself wishing that Johnson could have sprinkled me with some of his tooth fairy amnesia dust—because this is one movie that I’d rather forget.
