Zahnfee auf Bewährung (Tooth Fairy) 
U.S.A./Canada
2010
Opening 18 Mar 2010
Directed by:
Michael Lembeck
Writing credits:
Lowell Ganz, Babaloo Mandel, Joshua Sternin, Jeffrey Ventimilia, Randi Mayem Singer
Principal actors:
Dwayne Johnson, Ashley Judd, Stephen Merchant, Seth MacFarlane, Julie Andrews
Derek Thompson (Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson)
plays ice hockey for a minor league team. What he lacks in ingenuity and
talent, he compensates with brute force and aggression. As a result his
opponents often find themselves searching the ice for their teeth after a
collision with Derek. Thus his nickname: the Tooth Fairy. Off the hockey court
he makes the drastic mistake of denying the reality of tooth fairies. He receives
a summons accusing him of Violation 70136: Dissemination of Disbelief. Within
minutes he finds himself in Fairyland. The headquarters is a huge
train-station-like building and the CEO Lily (Julie Andrews) is all
business. As punishment he must become a bona fide tooth fairy, complete with
wings (“shouldn’t you be more in awe of someone with wings than without?”) and
tools for the job: a wand, invisibility spray, shrinking paste, dog-bark mints,
cat-away, and amnesia dust. By the end of the film he will have been grateful
for all of them.
As Derek becomes a better tooth fairy, he
also becomes a better person. Between tooth fairy jobs, he lives a normal life.
He gradually becomes a caring partner for his girlfriend Carly (Ashley Judd)
and a dependable friend for her children. Little Tess has lost a tooth; son
Randy views him less suspiciously. But there is still work to do on the hockey
court; his aggression has dissolved, but for a while there is nothing to
replace it. Since this is (delightful) family entertainment, it all works out
in the end. Dreams come true.
I loved seeing Julie Andrews again and she
is perfect: a strict disciplinarian straight out of The Sound of Music and Mary
Poppins. My favourite character was Stephen Merchant, a British
stand-up comedian who plays Tracy, Lily’s right-hand, tooth-fairy trainer. He – thin and nerdy –
accompanies The Rock – muscle-bound and naïve – on his nightly visits to
retract teeth from beneath pillows. Between Andrews and Merchant everyone in Fairyland
seems to have a British accent. Are tooth fairies a European franchise?
Directed by Michael Lembeck, Billy Crystal has a small role as
the hockey coach. Watch it in English if possible for plays on words like “the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth,” or “fairy krishna,” or “fairyoke.” (This
film is not to be mistaken for The Tooth Fairy, a 2006 horror film about a murderer who kills kids.) (Becky Tan)
