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Throughout this cartoon adventure aimed at tweens, the world of fairies focuses on gathering baby teeth of sleeping children and leaving gold under their pillows. Board-riding youthful nonconformist fairy Van (voiced by Booboo Stewart) is less than thrilled about devoting his life to collecting baby teeth—a sentiment that’s entirely reasonable. He’s only slightly more interested in the underlying economics behind it all: the fairies hand over the molars to mysterious goblins, who provide metal as payment. However, Van’s interest grows when he catches sight of a goblin (played by Larkin Bell), who turns out to be not at all the ugly gnome he had imagined.

A Forbidden Bond and Common Enemy

Everything is prepared for an exciting quest with a gentle touch of young love (though it’s perfectly appropriate for children). The goblin and fairy groups are estranged from each other, and nothing fuels the excitement of secrecy to unite beings as one. Both groups portrayed in the film are remarkably alike, yet both maintain biased views about the opposite side. The fairies are said to be entitled sorts, prone to stealing anything they want, while the goblins are allegedly dim-witted, foul-smelling, and primitive, but are in fact intelligent and advanced in technology.

Naturally, such a setup requires a shared foe to join forces against, and this is duly provided in the form of some nasty spiders, voiced by Jon Lovitz and Fran Drescher. There’s no beating about the bush about their intentions: they aim to devour the fairies and goblins, and they serve as quite savage, though not especially competent, villains.

Target Audience and Final Thoughts

You won’t find all that many children’s animations aimed at the kind of audience that is beginning to have first crushes, but aren’t yet mature enough for the content teenagers are watching instead of popular teen sagas. If your child is in the right age bracket, it probably won’t to be their next favorite movie, but you could do worse.

A Tooth Fairy Tale arrives in Scottish cinemas from 10 October and the rest of the UK from 24 October.