11:01:39 AM Will Edmondson: Tara, last night was a night of firsts: It was our first (and only, presumably) time seeing "Tooth Fairy," of course, but it was also your first foray into live tweeting. How would you say it went?
11:02:12 AM Tara Ariano: Actually, I also live-tweeted "Twilight" when we watched that on Pay Per View, so...yes, this was a much more pleasant experience.
11:02:40 AM Will Edmondson: Wow, I thought I'd suppressed any memories I had about "Twilight," but here come the post-traumatic stress flashbacks! Thanks a lot, Tara! But I thought "Fairy" was pretty good! Or, let me qualify that: As good as we could possibly have expected "Tooth Fairy" to have been.
11:03:43 AM Tara Ariano: I would say a shaky premise was carried amazingly far on the charm of The Rock -- which is plentiful and undeniable.
11:04:19 AM Will Edmondson: Tara has a crush on Dwayne Johnson, readers. She "smells what he is cooking," so to speak.
11:05:16 AM Tara Ariano: Boy, do I. The movie had problems, but The Rock's posterior in tights was not among them.
11:06:01 AM Will Edmondson: Well that was the most appropriate way you could've possibly gotten your drooling and stammering across, Tara, and I think you deserve recognition for that.
11:06:12 AM Tara Ariano: Thank you.
11:08:08 AM Will Edmondson: But let's talk a bit about the movie, as is our custom: The Rock is a hockey player (YES), nicknamed the Tooth Fairy (DOUBLE YES), because he knocks his opponents' teeth out regularly (!!!). Then, after headhunting men half his size, he goes to the penalty box, where he sits in a personalized recliner to wait out his penalty. Frankly, I don't get what's weak about this movie. On premise alone, it's better than "Citizen Kane," in my opinion.
11:08:52 AM Tara Ariano: I can certainly think of worse ways to tie The Rock's character to the "Tooth Fairy" premise. It would have been a much worse movie, for instance, had he played a dentist.
11:10:59 AM Will Edmondson: I would've thought that you and your countrymen would have liked the hockey setting a bit more than that, but I guess now is normally when Canadians hibernate, so that could just be a sign of mental sleepiness.
11:11:21 AM Tara Ariano : I don't think that Lansing, Michigan, where the movie is set, is generally very warm in January.
11:11:51 AM Will Edmondson: Yeah, but Canada has more bears than people is the joke. KEEP UP!
11:12:24 AM Tara Ariano: Careful: I'm one-eighth bear, and I will maul you.
11:12:25 AM Will Edmondson: So anyway, The Rock also tells it like it is, and crushes children's hopes and dreams.
11:14:47 AM Tara Ariano: Yes, and here's where we get to the Disney part of the story: since every other mythical character -- Santa, the Easter Bunny, cupid, genies -- has already had its moment to be exploited in pop culture, all that's left for Disney is the Tooth Fairy. It's kind of like when they'd gone through all the kids' stories and had to resort to doing a cartoon adaptation of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." The problem with the premise is that there's not really a lot of Tooth Fairy mythology for them to mine: you lose a tooth, you get $1. (In my day, it was a quarter -- that's how old I am, Will.)
11:15:25 AM Will Edmondson: Ancient!
11:15:26 AM Tara Ariano: So the result is, the story's not that compelling with rich fantasy backstory. It's just about the acquisition of money by children.
11:16:03 AM Will Edmondson: Why that's a completely cynical view of a pretty wholesome story about following your dreams, Debbie Downer!
11:16:15 AM Tara Ariano: I know -- I'm as bad as The Rock in the movie!
11:16:27 AM Will Edmondson: Except you can't skate.
11:16:40 AM Tara Ariano: I CAN skate. Take that back.
11:17:57 AM Will Edmondson: Nah, it's funnier if I don't. The point is, the movie isn't exactly a finessed story of childhood dreams, it's pretty formulaic and definitely has its "you've got to be kidding me" moments. And I don't count Billy Crystal's five minutes of screen time among those moments, because I actually thought he was pretty funny.
11:18:56 AM Tara Ariano: Yeah, he was all right. That's about as much Billy Crystal as I ever care to see. He played the fairy version of Q, educating The Rock about all the tools he'll need after he gets sentenced, for his crimes against childhood imagination, to act as an actual tooth fairy for two weeks.
11:20:08 AM Will Edmondson: Billy Crystal I don't mind, but I agree that too much of that character would've been too much. But I could've watched an entire movie about Stephen Merchant's creepy Fairy Case Worker character, though that movie would probably be rated R...or maybe even NC-17.
11:23:15 AM Tara Ariano: Yes. Merchant can't be a tooth fairy himself because he doesn't have wings. Apparently, there's a lot of wing-based discrimination in the fairy world. And as a result, he has severe wing envy. I'm sure most of the kids who see the movie won't have any idea who Stephen Merchant is -- they shouldn't watch "Extras," certainly -- but you have to admit that with that crazy beanpole physique, bug eyes, and goofy smile of his, he is definitely a good physical fit for children's comedy.
11:25:16 AM Will Edmondson: Yikes, if you like giving your kids nightmares as a big man with scary eyes leers into their bedrooms and steals their teeth.
11:25:30 AM Tara Ariano: Oh, kids won't pick up on that. Nor on all the gay subtext. (I hope.)
11:26:19 AM Will Edmondson: That's a whole other thing. I don't know if the gay/pedophilia/general creepiness subtext was conscious or not, but I was cracking up a lot in that movie for exactly the wrong reasons.
11:27:11 AM Tara Ariano: They had to give SOME reason to watch, because seriously, that story was rote and predictable, EVEN for a kids' movie.
11:30:51 AM Will Edmondson: Right, and this brings up our old conversation about expectations. To the uninitiated, Tara gave "2012" 3.5 stars and "Up in the Air" only 2, because she thought "2012" better achieved its goals. (It didn't, but whatever. [Wrong. -- TA]) I think "Tooth Fairy" was tolerable enough to not make me want to claw my eyes out. It's certainly better than "New Moon." But ultimately, yes, it was definitely a beneficiary of my laughably low expectations for a Rock vehicle about a hockey-playing fairy.
11:31:15 AM Tara Ariano: The most important thing to me is that it won't do any damage to the Rock brand. He is magic.
11:32:28 AM Will Edmondson: Well, I think the magic of The Rock's "brand" is that it doesn't matter what he does; haters can hate, but Tara's in love, and we have to respect that.
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