WHEN a cheap British comedy gets it wrong, it really gets it wrong. Tooth is a children's misadventure set in the run-up to Christmas but in keeping with its poor sense of comic timing, it arrives in February, presumably for half-term.

The "all-star" British cast has University of York alumnus Harry Enfield donning pantomime villain black to play the evil Plug, a terrifying fairy hunter with the feisty Tooth in his sights.

Tooth lives in a world called Fairytopia that has lost its ability to use magic, much like Edouard Nammour's film as it turns out.

Presumably in the forlorn hope of attracting American interest, Tooth is played by a young American, Yasmin Paige, in that spunky, cocky way we Brits haven't been allowed to do on screen since Oliver! walked off with the Oscars in the Sixties.

This meddlesome little Tooth fairy is so fed up with the way most fairies have forgotten about magic, she decides to give away all the tooth fairy money, triggering problems all round.

The money ends up in the possession of two young children with a Brummie rocker (Tim Dutton) and a bossy American (Sally Phillips) for parents. Quite why a Brummie musician should be married to a a cash-strapped American played by an English comic actress is beyond explanation. Quite why Jim Broadbent wished to be the voice of a beneficent Rabbit, only he knows.

Why Stephen Fry and Richard E Grant chip in with cameos in this dross is simple to explain: they always do. Vinnie Jones has a laugh as a dentist who puts the mental in dental, but you really should see anything but Tooth this weekend.

Harry Enfield tells Charles Hutchinson how he finally found a film script he liked the look of in Tooth.

HARRY Enfield is cutting his teeth as a villain in his new film role, the fairy-hunting Plug in the children's comic adventure Tooth.

"I'm playing a baddie, chasing fairies, capturing them and being nasty to children," he says. "It's nice! I practise on my own children until they say 'Please don't talk to me like this Daddy.' There's no child hitting in the film, unfortunately."

Enfield, a former University of York student, was last seen in a prominent film role in 2000, when playing his petulant teen creation, Kevin, in the gross-out comedy Kevin & Perry Go Large.

He was attracted to Tooth by the script. "It's one of the best I've read for a long time, and I've got some nice lines. It read like a movie script, not like 'They all get a bit sad and die!' There's few made over here like that," he says.

"I get quite a few scripts and usually they're just quite depressing. There a lot of worthy films made here. If I'm not interested in seeing it, then I'm not interested in being in it. I like fun films, I'm not very good on 'worthies'. Those Baftas, you get Best Actor for 'Oh no, I'm dying'."

Tooth has a transatlantic feel, casting Enfield with a British accent and fellow Brit Sally Phillips with an American accent. "I think they wanted an American for my role and I said 'I'm not going to attempt to be American', because it wouldn't pass off over there," says Enfield.

"If you're a baddie, you're allowed to be British. With Tooth, I just thought it didn't feel like an English script. I took my children to see it. They said 'Very good to excellent', which is quite a good score. They were cripplingly embarrassed to see me in it.

"My son, who is six, has just become aware that people say 'Hello, Harry?' a lot. He's always said 'How do you know that person?' And I go 'Oh, y'know, I just met him somewhere.' At school, he's become aware that older boys want to know him. It's an odd one. I don't want him to be known as 'Harry Enfield's son'. So he's slightly confused by all that. So I thought this was probably quite a good thing to show them: me playing a baddie."

Enfield is delighted to be performing alongside Phillips. "She is my heroine, so it's nice to work with her. Her show Smack The Pony is the only programme that me and my wife religiously laugh at. There are some things I like - like The Office - that she kinda likes but not in the way I like them. Smack The Pony is the only programme we both laugh at."

He enjoyed the experience of making a film with director Ed Nammour. "He's got a very child-like mind. I don't mean immature, but he is an innocent, like Terry Jones. He's the closest person I can compare him with," says Enfield. "He wants children to go 'Wow!' at steam or people in funny costumes - like the fact that all the fairies are all old-fashioned looking and ugly.

"But he's also got his adult sense of humour: 'Who are you? The Cheesecake fairy?' or 'I am the anti-claus'. That's why I did the film, for that line. He understands children, and he can talk to them and get them to do things. He just knows how their minds work."

Never mind Nammour's skills at directing the children in the Tooth cast, how easy is Enfield to direct on set? "I do get a bit... I'm very hyper-critical of what I do. I'm a bit of a pain to be around. Some actors - like Rowan Atkinson - can do it exactly the same every time. But I think there's ten per cent missing, and I have to do it until I know it's right."

Enfield is looking to stretch his talents, and has not ruled out doing serious drama. "I'd love to. It depends. It'd be much more sensible. What I'd really like to do is a modern political...a Dr. Strangelove type thing."

In the meantime, he is at home chasing fairies in Tooth, a children's film with a little extra bite for adults, he says. "I mean obviously it's not Toy Story but there are lots of jokes for the adults, and they don't get in the way. The director knows what he's doing. It's a bit Chitty Chitty Bang Bang really."

Tooth is showing at Vue, York.

Updated: 16:01 Thursday, February 19, 2004