A Tooth Fairy Tale Review: Animated Adventure with a Touch of Family-Friendly Tween Romance
Throughout this cartoon adventure aimed at tweens, the world of fairies focuses on collecting baby teeth of sleeping youngsters and leaving treasure beneath where they sleep. Board-riding youthful nonconformist fairy Van (brought to life by Booboo Stewart) shows little enthusiasm about spending his future to collecting baby teeth—a feeling that’s entirely reasonable. He’s only a bit more curious about the underlying economics behind it all: the fairies deliver the teeth to unseen goblins, who supply gold as payment. However, Van’s interest is piqued when he spots a goblin (voiced by Larkin Bell), who proves to be far from the hideous creature he had imagined.
A Forbidden Bond and Common Enemy
Everything is prepared for an adventure with a light sprinkling of young love (though it’s perfectly appropriate for children). The fairy and goblin communities are separated from one another, and there’s nothing like the thrill of the forbidden to bring people as one. The two species as seen here are incredibly similar, yet both maintain biased views about the other. Fairies are supposed to be self-centered sorts, given to stealing anything they want, while the goblins are allegedly dim-witted, foul-smelling, and backward, but are in fact intelligent and advanced in technology.
Naturally, this scenario needs a shared foe to unite against, and this is duly provided in the form of some nasty spiders, voiced by Jon Lovitz and Fran Drescher. There’s no beating about the bush about their intentions: they want to eat the fairies and goblins, and they make for quite savage, if not especially competent, villains.
Target Audience and Overall Impression
You won’t find very many children’s animations aimed at the viewer group that is starting to experience early romances, but are not old enough for whatever 14-year-olds view these days instead of Twilight. Should your youngster is in the right age bracket, it probably won’t to be their next all-time fave, but you could do worse.
The Tooth Fairy Story releases in movie theaters in Scotland starting October 10 and the rest of the UK beginning October 24.
