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You saw the trailer for Novocaine recently, and I had to chance to see it last night. I must say, I wasn’t that bothered about it, but a mate had a ticket and dragged me along.
The movie stars Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Jacob Batalon, Betty Gabriel, Matt Walsh, Conrad Kemp and Even Hengst.
The Story
The plot outline is:
When the girl of his dreams is kidnapped, a man incapable of feeling physical pain turns his rare condition into an unexpected advantage in the fight to rescue her.
We meet Nate (Quaid), who is a lovable loser, like most male characters in movies these days. He works in a bank, where he helps everyone out, and he fancies the newest bank teller Sherry (Midthunder).
She asks him out on a date, which he turns down because he’s too nice. He ends up saying yes, and they go out for a cherry pie (not a euphemism). Nate explains he’s never eaten pie because of his condition.
He cannot feel pain, and if he eats food, he might bite through his own tongue. That’s the same excuse I use for the wife’s cooking. Anyways, he ends up trying some of the pie and loving it.
This opens the world to Nate, and he starts to enjoy things he’s never done before. One evening, Nate and Sherry are in a bar, and one of Nate’s old schoolmates is there. He calls him Novocaine, as that was Nate’s nickname at school.
Everything is going well until the bank is robbed. They try to beat up Nate to open the safe, but it doesn’t work, obviously. The robbers take Sherry and Nate goes to rescue her.
There is a little more to the plot, a mild twist, but it’s nothing jaw-dropping, but I will leave it, in case you do want to see it.
The Cast
The main problem with Novocaine is Quaid himself. As I said, he’s a lovable loser, but he’s the same lovable loser that he was in The Boys. In fact, Hughie and Nate are pretty much the same, on the same journey and character arc.
Playing the lovable loser starts to grate a little in Novocaine though. Here’s a drinking game: take a swig every time Nate says “Sorry”. You will be inebriated within the first 10 minutes of the movie.
I’m pretty annoyed at myself for not knowing that Jack Quaid is the son of Dennis Quaid. I honestly only found out about a week ago, now I know this, it explains a lot. I love Dennis Quaid, the guy is awesome, handsome, and just cool. I have a theory.
Since Dennis is such a cool guy, I’m guessing that a curse was put on him at some point. This curse meant that he would be cool, awesome, and good looking, but his first-born son would have all of his nerdiness, awkwardness and generally not be cool!
It makes sense to me, that Jack is not like his father at all.
Midthunder is rather good though; she has more of an arc than Nate and she is easy on the eye. If it wasn’t for her, I doubt I could have gotten through Novocaine at all.
Jacob Batalon is also in this movie. He plays a lovable sidekick who helps out the main protagonist.
It’s A Bit Cranky
The other issue with Novocaine is that Crank exists. I saw someone list a bunch of other movies with pretty much the same premise (which I can’t find now), but I agree. Novocaine is nothing new, it’s just the same old tart in a new dress. I just recalled Upgrade, which is the same story, but far better done than this.
Crank is a much more enjoyable movie because it knows what it is: bloody stupid. However, it has fun with it and so does the audience. Novocaine isn’t sure what it wants to be.
Some of the jokes are funny and I did find myself laughing in places, but then the violence is a little too over the top. It switched too much from violence to slapstick and back.
That Must Hurt
Another of the issues is the believability of it. I know that’s a silly thing to say, but again, comparing it to Crank, weirdly, Crank was more believable than Novocaine. I’ve not gone mad, bear with me.
All of Crank was bloody stupid, but you are carried on the journey of Chev (Statham) even with all he was going through. There are times in Novocaine that I just couldn’t believe what Nate was going through.
OK, he can’t feel pain, but I’m pretty sure blood loss is a thing. If the body runs out of blood, it stops working and dies, not in Novocaine it doesn’t.
Nate keeps putting himself in stupid situations; if just one person had shot him in the leg, he wouldn’t be able to walk. In fact, a single bullet to the head wouldn’t hurt Nate, but I’m sure he would die.
Fine. Novocaine, like most movies, requires we have a willing suspension of disbelief. This wouldn’t be an issue if the movie didn’t take itself so seriously.
Overall
I’m being picky and overthinking it. Overall, I did have fun, but just not in a ‘this is the greatest movie of all time’ way. It was fun, but the story was dull. I was fine to follow along and I did find myself laughing in places.
One of the Outposters said in the comments for the trailer that the biggest issue is Quaid. I find him perfectly average, I don’t hate him, I don’t love him, he’s perfectly average. I reviewed Companion the other day and I liked it. Again, he’s playing the lovable loser, but Companion had a good story, so I let it slide.
Novocaine doesn’t have a good story; it’s an average story with a little twist, but nothing earth-shattering. How you view Quaid will have a deep impact on your view of this movie.
If you fancy a giggle, blood, guts, and gore, you’ll have fun with Novocaine. It’s not something that you have to overthink, like I did. It gets a perfectly down-the-middle 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Novocaine is in cinemas from the 28th of March in the UK, and it’s already out in the US.
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