Obie Trice once famously sang When I leave here tonight and I go to sleep and wake up, hopefully she got some teeth.""
Clearly, Trice was not referring to Dawn, the protagonist of Mitchell Lichtenstein's chilling comedy-horror ""Teeth,"" a film that turns the ancient ""vagina dentata"" myth into a horrifying reality.
Although the movie has many solid aspects, turning the conventional horror movie on its head by empowering the female lead, it ultimately cannot live up to the hype it received at the Sundance Film Festival. In short, Dawn (Jess Weixler) is a modern-day Marcia Brady: She's eternally upbeat, the object of many boy's affections and a tireless champion of chastity until marriage. In fact, Dawn's one sexual fantasy envisions her on her wedding night. Yet, these dreams are tainted by the lingering thoughts of the aforementioned teeth on her nether regions, and when one of the many misogynist boys in the movie forces himself on her, the mighty teeth roar, robbing him of his manhood.
Dawn is naturally horrified, but as the movie progresses, she begins to grow into her strange curse, turning it into a near superpower against the hordes of men whose only aim is to get her in bed.
Therein lies the problem of Lichtenstein's film. Rather than subtly developing nuances in Dawn's character, he insists on a simple formula of ""girls good, boys bad, bye-bye penis.""
Subtlety is not Lichtenstein's forte. For the first half of the movie, there are endless vaginal images (peering through a hole in a hollow tree, Dawn and a boy exploring a dark, moist cave after swimming), and Dawn's house is frequently shown next to a nuclear reactor (So that's how those teeth showed up.)
Then, there are the sex scenes. While I consider myself fairly strong-willed, the severed, bloody members were almost too much to handle. Although the horror genre does rely on shock and awe to make a movie succeed, this felt extremely forced, especially given the ridiculous after-effects seen by the victims of Dawn's dentures. Weixler turns in a great performance, one which moves beyond the tired script, but every supporting cast member around her - from Tobey, the Born-again Christian gone bad, to Brad, the incestuous stepbrother - feel like caricatures.
Instead of exploring Dawn's dilemma about what to do with her toothy curse, Lichtenstein gives her the easy way out, casting every male character as a rapist or soulless jerk. The only redeeming aspects of the movie are the growth of Dawn's character as she lives one of the strangest coming-of-age tales ever and the occasionally good penis jokes.
Although some hyper-feminists may cheer as Dawn tears through more wieners than Kobayashi at the Coney Island hotdog-eating contest, most will shake their heads as Lichtenstein bashes the viewer over the head with yet another over-the-top scene.
Although the movie's premise is original, and Weixler's performance is inspired, ""Teeth"" could use a trip to the orthodontist.
