The Tooth Fairy Story Review: Animated Adventure with a Touch of Family-Friendly Tween Love Story
Throughout this cartoon journey for preteens, the world of fairies focuses on gathering teeth from slumbering children and placing treasure under their pillows. Skateboarding youthful nonconformist fairy Van (voiced by Booboo Stewart) shows little enthusiasm about devoting his life to gathering baby teeth—a feeling that’s completely understandable. He’s only slightly more interested in the underlying economics behind it all: the fairies deliver the teeth to mysterious goblins, who provide metal as payment. However, Van’s interest is piqued when he catches sight of a goblin (voiced by Larkin Bell), who turns out to be far from the ugly gnome he had imagined.
A Forbidden Connection and Shared Threat
Everything is prepared for an exciting quest with a light sprinkling of young love (even though it remains very much suitable for children). The fairy and goblin communities are estranged from each other, and there’s nothing like the thrill of the forbidden to bring people as one. The two species as seen here are remarkably alike, yet both maintain biased views about the other. The fairies are said to be self-centered sorts, given to taking anything they want, while goblins are allegedly stupid, smelly, and backward, but are in fact intelligent and technologically advanced.
Naturally, such a setup needs a common enemy to join forces against, and that need is met in the form of some nasty spiders, voiced by Jon Lovitz and Fran Drescher. There’s no beating about the bush with these guys: they want to eat the fairies and goblins, and they make for fairly bloodthirsty, though not especially competent, villains.
Target Audience and Final Thoughts
You won’t find all that many animated films targeting the kind of audience that is beginning to have first crushes, but are not old enough for the content teenagers are watching in lieu of popular teen sagas. If your child falls into this age group, this is unlikely to become their new all-time fave, but it’s a decent choice.
A Tooth Fairy Tale arrives in Scottish cinemas from 10 October and the rest of the UK from 24 October.
