Teeth

Released: 6th May 2007

Directed By: Mitchell Lichtenstein

Starring: Jess Weixle, Hale Appleman, John Hensley

Certificate: 18

Before I had emerged myself into the jagged molar ravine of a fundamentalist Christian (and I’m guessing this is not an introductory line you consistently read, unless you’re Charles Manson’s scribe) I was previously told about the plot summary of Teeth. That’s because explaining this movie (which is essentially about a girl discovering that her cocksocket is infested with inhuman fangs) in detail is very much the same as interpreting the faecal remnants of a dead sailor. Why is it a sailor? I hear you ask. Why is this movie embellishing vaginal incisors? I am aware that it is a dark comedy and it’s likely that the director, Mitchell Lichtenstein incited this concept because an Evangelical Christian student with mutated snappers hanging out of her gammon shake isn’t a very serious one, to say the least. Lichtenstein may sound like the catering manager of the Gestapo legion and has yet to explore sunlight but he knew where this was heading and maintained a degree of light-heartedness to boot. Teeth opens up with…no, not yet. The story prosaically portrays a little girl splashing about in a kiddy pool with her new found step brother. Suddenly, the boy subjects her to his junior shish skewer and politely asks for her to exchange pleasantries also and then the little boy gets slightly too enthusiastic and his finger is eaten by what we believe to be the vagina dentata myth which is frequently scrutinized throughout the production.

Couple years down the line and the girl becomes a successful college student (if you can call it that) handing out pious novelty leaflets and spreading her abstinence butter, concealing the toast of freedom. Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked again. She’s your run of the mill girl with a chip on her shoulder and presumably, always late for class for the sole reason of being burdened with purity rings. Her brother, on the other hand, hits bongs with starved escorts that smell of meth and herpes and spends copious amounts of time feeding his destructive beagle with human remains. Suffice to say, this movie digs through clichés as if it was a small child searching for the dilapidated plastic-y toy robot in a box of Captain Crunch. I noticed a few and took the liberty of organizing them into double bullet points. This isn’t something I normally do but to evaluate the banality in this movie, I think it’s definitely worth noting.

1. Every time a television is in shot it is featuring an ancient horror movie, released in the 1930s indubitably. The painfully bad effects and props are just an obvious diversion to the horrendous acting in the real movie. I guess it’s the Comic Relief theory; you’re having an argument with your girlfriend and she confesses to sleeping with your best friend of 7 years and subsequently uncover a hairy knuckle in your salad. This situation is only reduced to a bare minimum when watching hundreds of Africans fall to the ground from cholera.

2. There are more stereotypes than a ‘Don’t do drugs’ campaign poster. These include Mr. Angry Dad who spends so much time flailing his belt around, his trousers have adapted to just sticking to his thighs. Then there’s the badass brother who coins the phrase ‘more stoned than Judas’ to the point where he appears to have not slept since 1987. Of course, we’ve already established the sanctimonious daughter with a chastity belt as large as her ego and then there are the boys who think they can scurry through her panties and are dressed as your typical intermediate baseball card guys. You remember when you were a kid and that one popular guy held the occult treasure of double penetration on his nokia? Well, yeah.

It’s not as bad as I make it out to be but you still need to take Teeth with a pinch of salt. It’s essentially a dark comedy movie and in that respect, will depress seriousness but given the stereotypical remnants and globule mass of clichés Teeth thrives on; the giggles you’ll make will more than likely be the desensitizing cringe-worthy content rather than the in-movie jokes. Long story short; if you wanted to know about razor sharp gnawers troubling a young woman then Eileen Lonergan isn’t doing anything these days.