TEETH DVD Review
A sure cure for penis envy, Teeth ultimately has more bark than bite.
Mitchell Lichtenstein's fright flick, which was released on R1 DVD last month and hits UK cinemas this weekend, rambles through a long set-up in a most agreeable manner. Jess Weixler plays Dawn, a preternaturally sweet and wholesome teenage girl who has taken a sacred vow to remain a virgin until marriage. In the film's opening sequence, though, her eyes lock with Tobey (Hale Appleman), a handsome young buck, while she is giving a stirring speech on abstinence to an auditorium of middle-school kids, and we know that her vow will soon be put to the test.
Dawn immediately starts spending time with Tobey, pairing off with another young couple to go to the movies and walk in the woods together. The four friends are ridiculed at school and support each other with platitudes; Dawn recognizes her attraction to Tobey and tries to fight it. Alas, the physical pull is too strong, and she ends up with Tobey in a cave behind a waterfall where all the local kids, "you know," as Dawn's friend says vaguely.
Up to this point, Dawn's sexual education has been left wanting. Her mother is sickly, her father is ineffectual, and her step-brother is creepy -- and attracted to her. The family lives in a house where a double-stacked nuclear reactor towers practically in the backyard, yet beyond that we don't get much sense of the community. Dawn wears a "promise ring" in connect with her vow of chastity, but the abstinence group itself seems pretty creepy: a lot of slogan chanting but very little group camaraderie. There's also no hint of a religious affiliation; without that kind of specificity, Dawn's motivations are unclear.
Dawn is left to tentatively explore her body at night, pull back out of guilt when she has a nightmarish vision of a large insect with giant jaws, and has no way to deal with her sexual desires other than to call the boyfriend of her dreams and go swimming with him, alone. Tobey turns out to be a creep, too, and is the first to make a definitive (and unfortunate) discovery of the secret in Dawn's most holy of holies.
Pretty much all the men in Dawn's life turn out to be sex-crazed creeps, so what's a girl to do?
Teeth moves in a straight line and at a decent pace throughout what we might call the "discovery" phase of Dawn's life, balancing the first blush of love, romance, and sexuality with the utter terror that accompanies the early stages of puberty. Then there's a sudden shift in tone toward a much more jocular, jovial, isn't this clever, far too self-consciously clever hipster-ism. The narrative reaches a logical conclusion, but not before jerking back and forth like someone who's never driven a manual transmission vehicle before.
It's almost as though writer/director Lichtenstein couldn't quite give himself completely to the material, pulling back from the extremely dark tunnel into which the film was headed. It's still a very decent piece of entertainment that questions the notions of sexual identity and the male/female dynamic in relationships, but it's also very easy to dismiss because the film doesn't want to take itself seriously.
Indisputably, the reason to watch this movie is Jess Weixler. She navigates every single emotional turn with aplomb, and is utterly, scarily believable both as a yearning young woman and as a vengeful temptress.
