{"id":11301,"date":"2025-03-09T18:53:33","date_gmt":"2025-03-09T22:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=11301"},"modified":"2025-04-23T00:50:34","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T04:50:34","slug":"novocaine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/03\/09\/novocaine\/","title":{"rendered":"Novocaine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" Novocaine<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paramount\/Action-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 110 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, grisly images, language throughout)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Dan Berk and Robert Olsen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lars Jacobson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Lorne Balfe and Andrew Kawczynski\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jacques Jouffret\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 14, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Jacob Batalon, Betty Gabriel, Matt Walsh, Evan Hengst, Conrad Kemp.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Novocaine<\/strong>, not to be confused with the 2001 black comedy of the same name, is surprisingly good. I didn\u2019t expect it to be. I thought it looked stupid. The trailer, which has been showing ad nauseam for months, didn\u2019t do anything at all for me. It turned out to be this week\u2019s Screen Unseen feature at my local AMC theater. I was apprehensive at first, but it dissipated once the movie got going.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen (Significant Other), Novocaine<\/strong> is best described as an action rom-com. That\u2019s the same way I described last month\u2019s Love Hurts. That one sucked. This one doesn\u2019t. For one thing, it has a more interesting protagonist. Nathan Caine (Quaid, Companion) is a mild-mannered assistant bank manager with a rare condition that renders him unable to feel pain. He has to be super-cautious in everything he does. He has the sharp edges in his apartment protected by tennis balls. He can\u2019t eat solid foods for fear he might bite off his tongue. He has his watch set to go off every three hours as a reminder to go to the bathroom. He lives a baby-proof life.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Nathan\u2019s life takes an upward turn when he agrees to have lunch with Sherry (Midthunder, Prey), the beautiful bank teller he\u2019s been crushing on for months. It\u2019s a successful first date. She even convinces him to take a bite of her cherry pie. No, the Warrant song did NOT start playing. He meets her for her art show later and things develop from there- i.e. they sleep together.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Life couldn\u2019t be better for Nathan, nicknamed Novocaine by his middle school classmates. He\u2019s in love. Then fate intervenes in the form of a violent bank robbery. After forcing Nathan to give up the combination to the safe, they grab Sherry and use her as a hostage to aid in their getaway. He, in turn, throws caution to the wind and goes after them himself. He intends to rescue the woman that stole his heart. The things we do for love, right?<\/p>\n

\u00a0This is where Novocaine<\/strong> jumps into action mode. Nathan\u2019s not exactly hero material, but his inability to feel pain allows him to keep going no matter what injury he sustains. Over the course of his rescue mission, he gets shot, stabbed, scalded and beaten. While fighting one of the baddies, he grabs a gun that fell into a deep fryer full of hot oil. He gets an arrow through his leg. Like the Energizer bunny, he just keeps going and going.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The robbers, led by a psycho named Simon (Nicholson, Smile 2), aren\u2019t Nathan\u2019s only problem. The detective on the case (Gabriel, Get Out) is after him. She and her partner (Walsh, Ted) want him to stop doing what he\u2019s doing and turn himself in so the police can do their job. Plus, he did kill one of the bad guys so there\u2019s that too.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Nathan\u2019s disorder is a real thing. It\u2019s called CIP (Congenital Insensitivity to Pain). It\u2019s a rare condition; roughly one in a million people suffer from it. Life expectancy is about age 25. Because they can\u2019t feel anything, they could die from a severe injury or illness. Nathan talks about his sheltered childhood and life. He\u2019s not very social. His only friend is this guy he does on-line gaming with. He\u2019s never met Roscoe (Batalon, the Spider-Man movies) face to face. He\u2019s the one he calls when he needs help in his mission to save Sherry. Roscoe agrees to aid him with the understanding that he\u2019ll put everything on Nathan when the police question him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Be warned, Novocaine<\/strong> is super violent. There is blood and broken bones. Most of the injuries Nathan sustains look absolutely painful. There\u2019s one scene where he searches an apartment that\u2019s been rigged with Home Alone-style booby traps. This is definitely one for the squeamish to avoid.<\/p>\n

\u00a0On the upside, Berk and Olsen strike a nice balance of action and comedy. It has plenty of the former and a fair amount of the latter. I got a good laugh out of how Sherry deals with an obnoxious guy, a former classmate of Nathan\u2019s, in a bar.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Novocaine<\/strong> works so much better than Love Hurts, a lame John Wick-lite affair in which the two leads (Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose) generate zero chemistry. Quaid and Midthunder spend most of the movie apart, but the scenes they have together are cute and appealing. That\u2019s mainly because of her. She proved herself a true bad ass in the Predator prequel and now she shows she\u2019s a capable romantic lead. Quaid is good as the unlikely hero. It\u2019s nice to see him in a good guy role after his malevolent turns in Scream 5 and Companion. Nicholson, son of acting legend Jack, channels his dad as the main bad guy. He\u2019s another one that\u2019s hard to kill. Batalon provides nice comic relief as the talkative sidekick.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I enjoyed Novocaine<\/strong>. It\u2019s a fun movie that demands nothing of the viewer other than a strong stomach. The action scenes are suitably thrilling. The numerous fights are well choreographed. Sure, it struggles a little with tone here and there, but the directors work through that minor glitch like champions. Still, it\u2019s a good movie to check out even if you\u2019re sick and tired of the trailer.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Novocaine (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paramount\/Action-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 110 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, grisly images, language throughout)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Dan Berk and Robert Olsen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lars Jacobson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Lorne Balfe and Andrew Kawczynski\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jacques Jouffret\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 14, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Jacob Batalon, Betty Gabriel, Matt Walsh, Evan Hengst, Conrad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11390,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Novocaine-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11301"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11772,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11301\/revisions\/11772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}