'Novocaine'

Jack Quaid stars in this diverting comedic action flick.

Novocaine is a diverting little action-comedy that, similarly to the recent Carry-On, feels like a real throwback to a certain kind of high concept movie from the ‘90s. It’s about an assistant bank manager, Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid), who suffers from CIPA, a rare (non-fictional!) genetic disorder that prevents him from feeling pain. That might seem like a gift, but it’s actually quite a problem because, as Today Is the Day tells us, pain is a warning. Consequently, Nathan leads an extremely cautious existence designed to prevent him from accidentally injuring himself; for example, he has to set a timer on his watch every three hours to remind himself to urinate, lest his bladder explode.

But then Nathan gets asked out on a date by Sherry (Amber Midthunder), a Manic Pixie Dream Girlish artist who works as a teller at his bank. Sherry manages to lure Nathan out of his shell a bit, and after just one evening of passion together, he falls in love with her. Alas, the very next day, a heavily armed trio of bad guys storm into the bank, rob the vault, and take off with Sherry as their hostage. Nathan promptly decides he can’t wait around for the cops to save Sherry from her captors, and thus sets out to rescue her himself, at which point his unusual condition allows him to become a most unlikely action hero.

Sometimes you see a movie and wonder how anyone could have ever thought it was a good idea. Novocaine is the opposite of that. The screenplay, by Lars Jacobson, isn’t perfect - Nathan and Sherry’s arcs are both half-baked - but it is reasonably clever, and was probably a lot of fun to read. It’s not at all difficult to surmise why anyone thought the movie would be good.

Unfortunately, the direction, by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, isn’t quite as strong. The action sequences wind up being kind of pedestrian; one can only wonder what a filmmaker like Die Hard’s John McTiernan or John Wick’s Chad Stahelski might have done with the same material. This movie needed the kind of fast-paced, geographically cogent set pieces that made last month’s Love Hurts cinematic cotton candy, and it doesn’t have those.

Not helping - and I’m aware that this isn’t the filmmakers’ fault - is that the trailers give away most of the best gags in the flick, severely undercutting the inventiveness of Jacobson’s writing.

Still, Novocaine manages to entertain. This is largely due to Quaid. Despite being a nepo baby (his parents are Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan), the rising star excels at playing an everyman; he’s warm and relatable and seems like the kind of dude with whom you’d wanna have a beer. As evidenced by his leading role on Amazon’s The Boys and his convincing heel turn in Companion, he’s also a damn fine actor. He’s in almost every single frame of Novocaine, and he carries the picture with supreme confidence and skill.

As for the rest of the cast, they’re… fine? Jacob Batalon’s role, as Nathan’s best friend, is ostensibly a cameo; he doesn’t get much to do. Same goes for Betty Gabriel and Matt Walsh as cops who think Nathan is in on the heist; all three are capable of much more than they’re asked to do here.

Ditto Midthunder. She’s already taken center stage in an action movie of her own, 2022’s excellent Prey, so it’s kind of disappointing to see her relegated to the damsel in distress role here (especially given that a large portion of Prey is, in a very literal way, about how women can kick ass, too). She does get to be kind of a badass near the end of the movie, but she easily could have starred as Natalie Caine in her own version of this story. It feels like she was done real dirty here.

Making slightly more of an impact is Ray Nicholson (son of Jack) as the heavy, Simon. Nicholson has had small roles in movies like Promising Young Woman, Licorice Pizza, and Smile 2, but this is the first thing I’ve seen him in where he has more than five lines. He shares his father’s devilish grin, and seems to be having a lot of fun playing a homicidal sociopath. Okay, so maybe he’s no Alan Rickman, but who is?

I suspect that if Novocaine, like Carry-On, had been an at-home streaming affair, it would probably hit much harder. But there are definitely worse ways to spend a couple of hours at the movies.