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Tooth Pari: When Love Bites Review: Every time I watch a global series on supernatural beings, I wonder where Indians lack. We have plenty of such beings in our folklore which can form great content for OTT. Then I watched Tooth Pari and finally got the answer. India doesn't lack content but a filmmaker with a vision. Tooth Pari Trailer: 'Dentist' Shantanu Maheshwari and 'Vampire' Tanya Maniktala's Impossible Love Story to Stream on Netflix From April 20 (Watch Video).
Bikram Roy (Shantanu Maheshwari) is a naive, innocent, gullible and nerdy dentist. One day, a beautiful girl named Rumi (Tanya Maniktala) visits him to fix her fallen tooth. The visit spirals into darker alleys of Kolkata where Bikram's unassuming world meets Rumi's blood-sucking monsters. But when there's absolute bloody power, there are defectors. Thus comes the army of Cutmundus, vampire killers led by Luna Luca (Revathy), and her sleeper cells. Ironically, these superhumans are ruled by a human, AD (Adil Hussain) who needs their blood for his own gains.
To be fair, I would commend the makers for attempting such a genre. We have seen similar attempts on Indian Television before (hello, Pyaar Ki Ek Kahaani!) and we all knew how shoddy they turned out to be. Tooth Pari isn't cringe or has laughable visual effects or a story more inhuman than the characters in them. Also, Kolkata adds a lot of character to the series with its old-world charm still intact. I choose to give benefit to the makers that the Kolkata setting wasn't conjured over the stereotypical nonsense about Bengalis being into black magic.
But there is a question anybody would like to ask Pratim D Gupta, the creator of the series. What was your plan behind all of this? In the entire eight episodes, I just couldn't figure out why would a director waste so many talented actors from Bengali and Hindi film industries on a story that's weak and pointless. Guess he believed the star strength alone will be enough to turn it into a landmark series. Unfortunately, it didn't!
Vampire's den in India is still dingy, dark and shabbily underground. Sunlight rings haven't happened to them. That's a pity because this is an audience that has already consumed enough content on vampires and werewolves to understand this is just lazy writing. It also makes me wonder who is the target audience here. It clearly isn't for the urban crowd as today, you get better supernatural content in many regional languages. The presentation may not suit the sensibilities of rural India either. So is it for the global audience? *Shudders*
Even the kills lack 'teeth'. Every vampire story needs to be grisly to be effective. None of the deaths here make you squirm or cry out in fear. They just happen like any other crime thriller. More the series progresses it starts getting absurd by the minute. In one scene, a vampire drinks from a human's chest! Roy spots strange phenomena in Rumi but never questions her. At times, he doesn't even get curious. Is it because he never got laid and sees this as the only opportunity? So fangs be damned. Shantanu Maheshwari Grooves to Viral Arabic Kuthu Song In Thalapathy Vijay's Style And Steals the Show (Watch Video).
Watch the trailer of Tooth Pari
Such a rich cast and such terrible character arcs. Tooth Pari has one of the most brilliant supporting casts we have ever watched in any webseries. It has Tillotama Shome, Saswata Chatterjee, Adil Hussain, Anjan Dutta, Revathy, Rajatabha Dutta and more and yet it falters at every instant with these actors. Backed by a frail and fragile story, all these actors are royally underutilised. But Shantanu Maheshwari and Tanya Maniktala have done their job well despite the limitations. Together they may not have much chemistry, but on their own, these two have managed to keep the proceedings a tad bit interesting.
Yay!
-Kolkata
-no embarrassing visual effects
Nay!
-poor and flawed script
-complete waste of great actors
-purpose-less
Final Thought
Tooth Pari: When Love Bites can be a part of your weekend watchlist if you are fine with a weak version of every vampire story you have ever watched. Tooth Pari: When Love Bites streams on Netflix.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 21, 2023 07:22 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
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