THE TOOTH FAIRY (USA 2009) ***
Directed by Michael Lembeck

THE TOOTH FAIRY has again a name star perform the role on babysitter who has to win the hearts of the children before he can get to his girlfriend.  The premise sounds familiar?  THE SPY NEXT DOOR which opened last week has a similar plot.

But THE TOOTH FAIRY (oddly with its 6 writers) takes the story to a different level – to fairy land.  When minor league hockey star Derek Thompson (Dwayne Johnson aka as the Rock) tells his girl’s (Ashley Judd) daughter (Destiny Whitlock) that there is no such thing as tooth fairy, he is summoned to perform fairy duty for two weeks.  The fairy boss (Julie Andrews who is quite funny taking her role in all seriousness) assigns geeky case worker Tracy (Stephen Merchant from UK’s The Office) to help him out.

The trouble THE TOOTH FAIRY is that there are too many subplots (the new hockey kid player; Tracy earning his wings; other kid playing guitar).  If these were all funny, Lembeck’s film would have worked wonders.  As such, quite the few segments (the hockey segments particularly) earn no laughs.  But a few like the tooth fairy factory (segment) and the intercourse between Jimmy, a type of fairy-Q (Billy Crystal) and Derek is plain outright hilarious.  They say a few really good laughs forgive a dozen mistakes and this adage holds true.  The hit and miss ratio is quite low but the hits do score the laughs.

In one particular scene, Derek is advised by Tracy that he just does not put in enough heart into his work.  In THE TOOTH FAIRY, the entire cast from Johnson, Andrews, Merchant even down to Judd who has a real underwritten role put in their full best in a film that has the most outrageous plot and ridiculous comedic set-up pieces.  The result, incredibly, is a film that is occasionally so funny.

Lembeck (SANTA CLAUSE 2 and 3) ups the sappiness factor several notches.  If it were not for the film’s really funny parts, I would not recommend this movie.  So what is the film’s biggest joke?  That a hockey player gets punished for telling little children that tooth fairies do not exist and not for creating all the violence on the rink.