Teeth - Movie Review and Showtimes - New York Magazine

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Teeth

Critic's Pick Critics' Pick

(No longer in theaters)
  • Rating: R — for disturbing sequences involving sexuality and violence, language and some drug use
  • Director: Mitchell Lichtenstein   Cast: Hale Appleman, Paul Galvan, Julia Garro, John Hensley, Trent Moore
  • Running Time: 88 minutes
  • Reader Rating: Write a Review
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Genre

Comedy, Horror

Producer

Mitchell Lichtenstein

Distributor

Roadside Attractions

Release Date

Jan 18, 2008

Release Notes

NY/LA

Official Website

Review

The fear of the castrating female�and her most fearsome weapon, the vagina dentata�has been woven to squirmy effect into horror pictures like Alien. In Teeth, Mitchell Lichtenstein makes the old v.d. the centerpiece of a gory female-revenge black comedy about Dawn (Jess Weixler), an abstinence-proselytizing teen whose vagina puts the bite on guys who don’t know no means no. (The titanic nuclear-power plant in back of her house might have something to do with the mutation.) Most of the movie works because the blonde Weixler has a �darling-daffy face (a pinch of Alicia Silverstone, a dollop of Drew Barrymore) and a should-I-or-shouldn’t-I ambivalence about sex that’s part realism, part screwball. The ending is a cheat, though. Once all the males are revealed as predators and Dawn learns to love her Inner Guillotine, the director might as well say, �Bite me.� — David Edelstein

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