Salt Lake Tribune Review

Late last year, I had a root canal -- and I'd gladly submit to another one, without anesthetic, rather than watch "Tooth Fairy" again.


This script (which is credited to six writers) has been bouncing around Hollywood so long, it was once pitched as an Arnold Schwarzenegger project. Now it's landed with one of Ah-nuld's heirs apparent, Dwayne "Don't Call Me 'The Rock' Anymore" Johnson, with a deadly thud.


Johnson plays Derek Thompson, a smugly showboating minor-league hockey enforcer who has earned the nickname "Tooth Fairy" for his skill at dislodging other players' dental work. He's dating single mom Carly (Ashley Judd) and trying to ingratiate himself with her two kids: sullen 13-year-old Randy (Chase Ellison) and cute 6-year-old Tess (Destiny Grace Whitlock), who loses a tooth and is hopeful the Tooth Fairy will reward her for it.


But when Derek tries to shatter Tess' childhood dream, he receives a summons from the head tooth fairy herself, Lily -- who is played by Julie Andrews, valiantly trying to maintain her dignity while wearing large fabric wings. Lily sentences Derek to two weeks' duty as a tooth fairy. He receives training from an unwaveringly sunny caseworker, Tracy (played by Stephen Merchant, better known as co-creator of "The Office" with Ricky Gervais), and gadgets from the veteran fairy Jerry (Billy Crystal, in an insufferable rehash of his Miracle Max character from "The Princess Bride").


Director Michael Lembeck (who helmed the second and third "Santa Clause" films) steers this thrown-together story with less grace than Derek's fledgling flights. The results are an unfunny combination of Johnson's pratfalls, cheesy special effects, clichéd training montages, sugary moral-of-the-story plot resolutions, and some dreadful one-off comic cameos by Brandon T. Jackson ("Tropic Thunder") and Seth McFarlane ("Family Guy").


No one comes out of "Tooth Fairy" smelling minty-fresh, but Judd especially is ill-served by a girlfriend role that forces the actress to switch moods every five minutes to suit the plot. Aside from a couple of little-seen indies last year, Judd hasn't starred in a movie since William Friedkin's creepy "Bug" in 2006 -- and it's an indictment of Hollywood's youth obsession that at 41, she can't land anything better than this.

-- Sean P. Means

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