The Tooth Fairy Story Review: Cartoon Journey with a Sprinkling of Kid-Appropriate Tween Romance

Throughout this cartoon journey aimed at tweens, the world of fairies focuses on gathering baby teeth of sleeping youngsters and placing treasure under their pillows. Skateboarding youthful nonconformist fairy Van (brought to life by Booboo Stewart) is less than thrilled about devoting his life to collecting baby teeth—a feeling that’s entirely reasonable. He is just a bit 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 proves to be far from the hideous gnome he had imagined.

An Unlikely Bond and Shared Threat

The stage is set for an adventure with a gentle touch of young love (though it’s perfectly appropriate for younger kids). The goblin and fairy communities are estranged from each other, and there’s nothing like the excitement of secrecy to unite beings together. The two species as seen here are remarkably alike, yet both maintain biased views about the other. Fairies are said to be self-centered sorts, prone to taking anything they want, while the goblins are allegedly dim-witted, smelly, and primitive, but are in fact bright and technologically advanced.

Naturally, such a setup requires a shared foe to join forces against, and that need is met in the form of a group of vicious spiders, with voices 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 fairly bloodthirsty, though not particularly skilled, villains.

Ideal Viewers and Final Thoughts

There aren’t very many animated films targeting the kind of audience that is starting to experience first crushes, but are not old enough for the content teenagers view these days in lieu of popular teen sagas. Should your youngster falls into this age group, this is unlikely to be their next favorite movie, but you could do worse.

A Tooth Fairy Tale arrives in Scottish cinemas from 10 October and across the United Kingdom from 24 October.