Novocaine review
Jack Quaid stars as a man doesn’t experience pain on a mission to rescue the person who made him feel something.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Novocaine
Directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen
Written by Lars Jacobson
Starring Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Jacon Batalon, Betty Gabriel, Matt Walsh, Evan Hengst and Conrad Kemp
Novocaine Review
The Mystery Movie Monday…or Screen Unseen…or whatever your theater chain of choice has dubbed the gimmick has seen some fun movies land in the eye sockets of moviegoers before they see a proper release. Sisu, Talk to Me, It Lives Inside, It’s a Wonderful Knife, Founders Day, Lisa Frankenstein, Sting, Your Monster and Companion have all been reviewed on this very website after catching a screening on a Monday night. The trick with the mystery movie, of course, is that they won’t tell you what you are signing up for when you pay the heavily reduced ticket price. You can usually figure out what it is with a little sleuthing…although they stopped providing clues long ago. AMC is still kind enough to label horror related features as “Scream Unseen” …a helpful trick when you write horror movie reviews.
Like Sisu…Novocaine isn’t horror related in any way. Also like Sisu…we’re going to cover it here because it utilizes gore effects to tell its story…and garner a reaction. We could also dive into the perspective game…where Jack Quaid’s lead character serves as an impervious to pain monster hunting down the film’s bad guys…but I just wrote about that in our review of Demon City…so just read that and assume it all applies to Novocaine as well. It’s kind of incredible that two movies giving their protagonist such a unique affliction came out so close together. Especially since they use it so differently.
Nathan Caine (Quaid) can’t feel pain. There’s a very long name for the ailment that causes this…which I do not remember. As a result, he lives a safe and lonely life…playing video games with his best friend who he has never met…and taking all his meals in liquid form since he could bite his tongue off and not even know he had done it. Nathan is an assistant bank manager who has a crush on bank teller Sherry (Amber Midthunder). Just when the two start to hit it off…a gang of bank robbers kidnap her. With police too far behind…Nathan decides to take matters into his own, unfeeling, hands.
Novocaine is a pure action/comedy. It takes its time getting to either of those things, however. Aside from some quirky Jack Quaid charm…the story doesn’t kick into gear until the bank robbers arrive. It allows Novocaine time to develop Nathan’s character and, more importantly, focus on his connection to Sherry. He’s going to do some insane things to try and rescue her…and you have to believe that he is willing to do them after just one night together. The story pulls it off though. Quaid makes you believe that he’d risk his life for the woman who made him feel something for the first time. Midthunder’s Sherry is fun and easily likable. She shakes Nathan out of his habits and into action.
Once the action gets going…Novocaine is a pretty relentless ride of action, gore and jokes. It reminded me in some ways of the underrated Dabney Coleman movie Short Time. The setup is different, but the punchlines come from similar places. In that movie…Dabney Coleman’s character believes that he is dying…and he wants to die on the job so that his family to claim his pension. The laughs are centered around his failure to pull that off. Novocaine is about a man who can’t feel any of the violent things that are done to him posing as an unlikely action hero. The laughs come from his injuries and deadpan reactions. Each is about a man who has no business throwing themselves into their situations…and finding absurd results for their efforts.
Which brings us to the gore portion of Novocaine. It gets pretty gnarly by the end. Nathan may not feel pain…but that doesn’t mean his body is unbreakable. Sure…he can stick his hand in a lit fryer to retrieve a gun…but that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to be looking at his burned to a crisp hand for the rest of the movie. At some point, Nathan’s own broken body makes for a useful weapon in combat. Everything is presented with a comedic tone…but there are some memorable gore effects in here. Especially for people who aren’t expecting it in their action/comedies.
The core idea of Novocaine is strong. It results in an entertaining watch. Where it stumbles, in my opinion, is with a twist halfway through the story. Not so much that the twist exists…more that they’re eventually stuck twisting it back again. One or none was the way to go here. Either commit fully to the surprise moment…or don’t do it at all. Novocaine tries to have its cake and eat it too…which…I’ve never really thought about that phrase before. We use it to mean greed but that’s…it’s like the only function of cake and exactly what you should do if you have it. A better analogy would be to have its cake and then take it away. You’d rather have the cake or have never had the cake to begin with. I got lost in his analogy. Novocaine takes a fun swing and then thinks it will be more fun to reset itself than carry through. It isn’t.
It’s also not a deal breaker. The fun in Novocaine works without thinking about the zig it will inevitably zag from too deeply. You can just sit back and enjoy the ride…watching pieces of Nathan break as he tries to hold onto a feeling.
Scare Value
Novocaine is a fun movie that flips the expectations of an action comedy on its head. Jack Quaid has the perfect regular guy feel for the part…and his reactions to the mayhem inflicted on his body are perfect. It could have benefited from trying to do a little bit less…or, perhaps, more with the emotional side of the character…but it succeeds at providing pure entertainment once the action kicks in to high gear.
3.5/5
Novocaine Link
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