PREMISE
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.
THE GOOD STUFF
QUAID- Jack Quaid is one of those actors with a very particular set of skills. His mannerisms are so individualistic that he feels like a man who has to be cast in the right thing for him to flourish. The film that he was in earlier this year, companion thoroughly misused these skills, and tried to make him into this villainous figure who was not funny and unlikable. NOVOCAINE plays to all of the strengths and turns them all the way up to level 10. He is quite fun to watch in this film.
THE GIMMICK- The trailer is selling this movie as a gross-out comedy. There was this idea going in that the main character was going to be pulling random things out of his body, and blood was going to be squirting everywhere, and it was going to be this kind of odd body horror comedy situation, but thankfully it’s not that.
It’s creative the way they incorporate the main character’s “superpower” (if you want to call it that) into a lot of the jokes being shown. Quaid’s character is not a superhero; in fact, he’s just a really boring guy who is thrown into a dangerous situation and is unable to feel pain. It would be almost inadvertently funny if it was treated seriously.
ACTION- As with the film’s gimmick, everything is made to make the audience laugh, including the multiple different well-done action sequences. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but it’s fun. Really fun.
THE BAD STUFF
THE ANTAGONISTS- Cleverly executed comedies such as this one often make the mistake of not having villains who are actual characters per se. NOVOCAINE has run of the mill generic villains that you see in action comedies. Funny as they are, there’s no genuine sense of menace here. And I do feel that the film could have benefited from that in a way.
THE UGLY STUFF
THE ROLLING JIU-JITSU ARMBAR FROM A STANDING POSITION- Have you ever been watching an action comedy and a character that hasn’t been built up as someone who can necessarily fight, pulls out a pinpoint jumping roundhouse kick, or reverse leg sweep, or some other advanced combat fighting move that doesn’t make sense given what we know about the character up until that point? Novocaine has one of those characters, and he pulls off one of the more difficult jiu jitsu moves to pull off in an actual fight.
The fight scene where this happened was going along swimmingly. Novocaine (A dude who does not know how to fight) is trading blows back and forth with this character…and then the bad guy pulls off this flawless execution of this move and it completely took me out of my suspension of disbelief.
I think this is really s*** that just bothers me, and it won’t matter to the common viewer. But I got to say something about it here. S*** is ridiculous.
**************
Got to admit, this is a movie that was a pleasant surprise. The audience I saw it with were laughing consistently, and there weren’t many technical aspects of the film that were bad. The plot of this movie goes by the numbers, and in a way you can predict where things will go.
As an action comedy, we’ve seen a lot of this kind of thing before just with a different gimmick. That’s not a bad thing. Sometimes you want to go into a movie and have some fun. This is definitely one of those films.Â
NOVOCAINE is in theaters on MARCH 14th
