No Bite

Here's a movie that could have been so much more, but it turned out to be dull and rather boring. But let me tell you about the concept before I discuss my problems with the film.

Teeth tells the story of Dawn O’Keefe, a girl who has made a purity promise and therefore won't have sex until marriage. Or so she wants to think. At some point (I'm not spoiling anything, believe me) she finds herself in that situation, only to discover what the "teeth" in the title are a reference to: the myth of the vagina dentata.

Okay, you must be thinking this sounds horrible, and that of course the movie was bound to suck (or bite), but I disagree. I thought this was the perfect setup for a funny dark-humor comedy, a great mix of laughs and horror, kind of like the hilarious and underrated Idle Hands. I mean, come on! A high school girl with teeth down there, surrounded by horndogs who just want to get in her pants? Cue laughs, right? Well, not quite.

The main problem with the movie is, I think, the tone of the film. It takes itself too seriously, and it somehow aspires to be a drama. A drama. Really? It's a movie about a girl with teeth in her unmentionables, and you're going for serious instead of funny? What a horrible mistake that is. Who would take a movie like this seriously? Well, only the creators of the movie, as it turns out.

The second issue I had with the film, and almost as important as the first one, was that Dawn was an incredibly unlikable character. There she was, finding out she was a freak of the worst kind, and I just didn't care! She had proved to be so bitchy and narrow-minded, such a holier-than-thou bible beater, that I am almost ashamed to confess I thought she deserved pretty much all the grief coming her way.

So we have an unrelatable main character I wish the worst to in a movie that should go for the laughs but spectacularly miscalculates and goes for the angst and religious virtue instead. A movie that should be full of jokes but turns out to be one. A movie that I encourage you to give a wide berth. As if you weren't doing that already.