Eversmile New Jersey

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.

The film is very slow, and the main character seems to make more enemies than friends. He may be a good dentist but he doesn't seem to be a people person. I admire a film about such a non mainstream topic, but it doesn't evoke much interest or empathy from me.

I'm not sure how many other mobile-dentist-in-Argentina movies have been made, but this must be the best of the bunch. Daniel Day-Lewis is absolutely possessed, as a man determined to rid rural South America of tooth decay. Maltin's low rating is unjustified (1 1/2*), this fits rather in the hidden treasure category. Mirjana Jokovic, a girl Daniel meets along the way, gives a haunting innocent-but-sexy performance.

Well, it is indeed about a traveling dentist, and it is played totally straight in spite of its amazing plot. So I found myself at the end of the film asking whether the film-makers and cast could possibly be serious or if it was a clever dry comedy. Was it a spoof of other too serious films about a man with a mission who falls into depression when others fail to see his vision, or was it honestly trying to be one of those serious films? Well, I have no answer to these questions, so my review divides here. Comedy - cute spoof of some the sort of movies Day-Lewis might well be in from time to time. Drama - stupid movie about a traveling dentist in Patagonia.

Played with a deadpan sincerity, this charming, gentle, dreamlike film may not strike the casual viewer as anything special at first. But Fergus O'Connell stands in the great picaresque tradition of Don Quijote: a man intensely focussed on doing good in a world that urgently needs it, baffled by that world's failure to acknowledge the need, and so devoted to his cause that he ignores that world's reality in favor of the surreal world that we see here through his idealistic eyes. Witty, sophisticated in its understanding of its literary roots, and brilliantly played by a perfect cast, this is one that you shouldn't miss. Unfortunate problems with the sound--from the endless winds in Patagonia--and other troubles kept it from theatrical release in the U.S. But Day-Lewis, as always, deserves an Oscar for this characterization. At least.