Dwayne Johnson & Ashley Judd in the movie The Tooth Fairy

Why do so many family comedies have the quality and consistency of something recently rinsed and spat down an ortho-sink?

"Lower your expectations," says the minor-league hockey player to the suddenly disillusioned preteen fan in Tooth Fairy.

"That's the only way you're gonna be happy."

Well, I tried that. But this PG-rated fantasy, conceived as a vehicle for the amiable Dwayne Johnson, is more or less talking to itself with that line.

The poster's the funniest thing about the project: Johnson, sporting a pair of fairy wings larger than his forearms, glaring at the camera. Known as "The Tooth Fairy" for his ability to knock his opponents' teeth all over the rink, Johnson's character, Lansing, Mich., minor-league hockey player Derek Thompson, hasn't taken an actual shot at the net for nearly a decade, owing to minimal ambition and maximal self-loathing. (Not since Dean Jones in the original "Love Bug" has such a paradoxically chipper sourball served as the protagonist of a kids' movie.)

The real tooth fairies in Molar Sprite Valley or wherever do not like this hockey player who dashes the dreams of young ones so cavalierly. So, whoosh, he's lifted off to Fairyland, where Julie Andrews (with wings) and a weirdly overscaled Stephen Merchant oversee Derek's stint as a "real" tooth fairy. His wings sprout at inconvenient times, in the locker room, or canoodling, chastely, with his girlfriend, played by Ashley Judd. Destiny Grace Whitlock plays her daughter; in an unusually good performance, Chase Ellison offers some real, unforced feeling as the lonely son whose music is his passion. And his sarcasm too: That's his other passion. It's a contractual must for sullen teenagers in these PG comedies to lip off like every other sullen teenager in a PG comedy.

Directed by the numbers by Michael Lembeck ("Santa Clause 2," "Santa Clause 3"), the film relies on gimmicks such as Derek learning to use amnesia dust or anti-cat blasters or shrinking paste in order to execute his tooth-fairy duties. The shrinking paste leads to a newly small Derek being pursued by a dino-sized kitten, a segment that may as well carry the subtitle "Honey, I Shrunk the Artist Formerly Known as The Rock."

Johnson's a game and antic presence, but saddled with this material -- credited to five screenwriters, including Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel -- he comes perilously close to tiring out the audience with all the nervous activity and the mugging. It's an honest instinct: Sell the gags, even if their sell-by date has expired. Working in a lower key, Billy Crystal is good for a chuckle or two as an elder fairy statesmen. Your kids may like some of it, or all of it. How should I know? I don't know your kids. I'd say the results land square on the action-star-goes-cuddly bubble alongside "The Spy Next Door" and "The Pacifer" and, eons and eons ago, "Kindergarten Cop."

 

MPAA rating: PG (for mild language, some rude humor and sports action).

Running time: 1:42.

Cast: Dwayne Johnson (Derek Thompson); Ashley Judd (Carly); Julie Andrews (Lily); Stephen Merchant (Tracy).

Credits: Directed by Michael Lembeck; written by Lowell Ganz, Babaloo Mandel, Joshua Sternin, Jeffrey Ventimilia and Randi Mayem Singer; produced by Jason Blum, Mark Ciardi and Gordon Gray. A Twentieth Century Fox release.

 

Dwayne Johnson is The Tooth Fairy, also known as Derek Thompson, a hard-charging minor league hockey player whose nickname comes from his habit of separating opposing players from their bicuspids. When Derek discourages a youngsters hopes, hes sentenced to one weeks hard labor as a real tooth fairy, complete with the requisite tutu, wings and magic wand. At first, Derek cant handle the tooth bumbling and stumbling as he tries to furtively wing his way through strangers homesdoing what tooth fairies do. But as Derek slowly adapts to his new position, he begins to rediscover his own forgotten dreams.

 

The Tooth Fairy Movie Review - Dwayne Johnson & Ashley Judd