When I rented this, I had no idea what to expect. In my opinion, it is a brilliant deadpan surreal comedy. Daniel Day Lewis's fierce quest to spread dental hygiene consciousness in Patagonia is utterly absurd but told as if it is the most natural and ordinary thing in the world. From his confrontation with a bandit who comes to him to have a tooth pulled to his theological debate with an elderly monk who refuses treatment, every inane adventure is told with complete conviction. After he learns that pandas have trumped dentistry, he must face despair, self-doubt, and self-loathing.
Daniel Day Lewis is an astonishing actor--he is a complete chameleon who becomes whoever he acts. He is always different; consider My Beautiful Laundrette, a Room with a View, My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, The Unbearable Lightness of Being--each role is utterly unlike the other. In Eversmile, New Jersey, you can see what Daniel Day Lewis might have been like in a Monty Python movie.
Finally, the footage of Patagonia is bleak and stunning. That alone would be enough to make the movie worth seeing.
