A Tooth Fairy Tale

A skateboarding teenage rebel tooth fairy in a forest world not made for wheels, Van (Booboo Stewart) has a hole in his wing but parents have always assured him that he doesn’t need it let it get in his way. With the magical powers that come naturally to his kind, he can do great things – if he only learns to focus and believe in himself, he can be just like everyone else. The thing is, he doesn’t want to be.

Van’s parents, who have borrowed their look and some of their attitudes from 21st Century would-be-hip white supremacists, are pillars of the community and contributors to an economy in which teeth are ground down to create fairy dust, which is traded to goblins for gold, which is used to keep small children putting lost teeth under pillows – but Van hates the thought of spending his whole life collecting teeth. He also gets into trouble for his curiosity about goblins. None of his friends have met one, yet they describe them in terms of absolute revulsion and disgust. Is that really deserved?

A disastrous first night of work in which he manages to do just about everything wrong concludes with Van meeting a goblin. Pink-haired, glitter-cheeked and dressed in a sleek black catsuit, Gemma (Larkin Bell) is not at all what he expected, even if she is green. His second night of work sees him getting stuck in a cobweb and making a new friend – scruffy little troll Rupee (Nicolas J Greco). He’s just a naturally cosmopolitan boy. Unfortunately, he also makes an enemy – scheming spider Webster, who plans to serve him up as a special feast for his queen.

In the goblin kingdom, Gemma is gushing about how cute her new acquaintance is.

“It will never work,” says one.

“He’s a fairy,” points out another. Well, yes.

Of course it doesn’t take long for the pair to begin secretly meeting up and learning about one another’s worlds. It turns out that everything about the goblins’ domain is ultra high tech and sophisticated, with Gemma a dedicated scientist on the verge of curing goblins’ allergy to natural light so that they will be free to move into the upper world. Quite what this would mean for the fairies, whose world is still in its Medieval period, is not something that either of them really thinks about. They watch shooting stars together and dream about world peace. Webster begins to dream about a two course meal.

The 3D animation here is pretty basic and aside from the decision to make the goblin state technological, there’s no real visual innovation. Gemma is pretty expressive but the other humanoid characters, including Van, are so carefully tailored to archetypes that they don’t have a lot of expression. Rupee and his kin are styled after the 1956 Thomas Dam dolls, like the stars of the popular Trolls films, but without any of their bright candy colours or singing. Other animals linger on the fringes: a cute ladybird in the fairy kingdom and an adorable pet shrew in Gemma’s lab – but beyond their inclusion, not much has been done to flesh out the world. A subplot about Gemma’s grandmother produces little pay-off.

That said, the film is pretty harmless (as long as your kids don’t start stomping on poor unfortunate spiders) and is a rare example of something which might entertain brave six-year-olds and wistful teenagers alike. It takes a positive approach in celebrating both science and magic, which latter, in this case, mostly means having confidence and being honest about one’s feelings. Whilst it’s unlikely to become a family favourite, it’s passably entertaining, and may strike a chord with those experiencing the first flush of romantic feelings themselves.

Reviewed on: 07 Oct 2025