Apparently, director David Atkins comes from a family of dentists. Unfortunately, this doesn't give him the right to make a movie involving dentistry. Sure, professional screenwriters throughout the world preach that "write what you know" hooey, yet we do not have movies about proctologists committing crimes of passion. Do we?

Nevertheless, Frank Sangster (Steve Martin) is a dentist who is overcome by Susan Ivy (Helena Bonham Carter) even though he recognizes she's a drug addict. When his dental narcotics go missing, he doesn't call the police like any boring, normal dentist who's screwing his long-legged assistant (Laura Dern) would. No, he tries to help Susan so he can screw her, too. Soon, more drugs go missing and dead people start turning up and Frank becomes increasingly embroiled in bad stuff.

This is all supposed to be moderately funny and moderately surprising since, after all, Frank is just a dentist and these sorts of things just don't happen to dentists. Atkins may be trying to dispel a notion that dentists don't have a sense of humor, but in the attempt he's started a new one: dentists don't have the slightest business being the subject of a movie.