"The Secret Lives of Dentists" darkly provides a looking glass into the minds and family life of two married dentists. From its first moments, the stereotypes and preconceived notions about dentists come alive with eccentricity. The movie recalls those fabulous shared moments where we sit in the dentist's chair with mouths pried open and a drill humming in our ears.

Director Alan Rudolph's ("Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle") story unravels through the daydreams and hallucinations of David Hurst (Campbell Scott, "Roger Dodger"), a quiet-mannered man who goes off the deep end when he wittiness his wife (Hope Davis, "About Schmidt") kissing another man. As David fears his wife will leave him, his subconscious takes on a different character Slater (Denis Leary), a sarcastic divorcee who is the complete opposite of the milder dentist.

David's new fa�ade on life affects his failing marriage and three children through extreme tension that creates a virus between the entire family, mostly as a result of the annoying one-liners Leary plants into his mind. The most enjoyable moments of the movie are the delusional and odd pornographic mind of David, whose neurosis about his wife even involve her hygienist and her esteemed chair.

The idiosyncratic and bizarre dialogue in "The Secret Lives of Dentists" foretells what one would imagine a dentist's life to be, completing the prophecy "Seinfeld" created for dentists and making those words anti-dentite spill out of audience's mouths.

Rating: 2 1/2 stars