Nathan Caine may not be able to feel pain, as the tagline for the new action-comedy “Novocaine” reads, but the same does not apply to audiences.
Although he doesn’t scream when his leg is impaled with an arrow or when he sticks his hand in a vat of frying oil, you might. I certainly did. Out loud. In a theater. With other people. There may have been some phrases uttered entirely involuntarily too. Were other people reacting in the same way, I wonder? I couldn’t hear them over my own groans. Hooray for the communal experience, I guess?
This is, in some ways, a film for people who thought John Wick wasn’t stabby enough. It delights in the relentless mutilation of its hero, a regular guy (played by Jack Quaid ) with a rare condition that has rendered him immune from feeling any sort of discomfort to bodily harm. Unlike such high concept premises as “Crank,” congenital insensitivity to pain analgesia (or CIPA) is actually real. But it’s not exactly a superpower, Nate explains. He can still die; it just might be because he hasn’t emptied his bladder in many hours. Or because he’s accidentally bitten his tongue off eating a sandwich. These are real concerns of his.
His entire existence is devoted to preventing these kinds of crises, mostly through tried-and-true baby proofing techniques like using tennis balls on sharp corners. Like Kelly Ripa before a show, he only consumes “non-chewing food.”
Work is stable and dull as an assistant manager at a bank. And dating is out of the question; He spends most of his free time playing online video games. Quaid, even with his two movie star parents, is somehow believable as this cautious introvert, though everything is played with a light touch and a wink. The movie, written by Lars Jacobson and directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, even begins with the mournful R.E.M. anthem “Everybody Hurts.”
Then Nate’s life is changed one day when a pretty teller at the bank, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), asks him out to lunch, then to drinks and even spends the night. The next morning, things get even crazier: Sherry is taken hostage after a violent robbery at the bank. These guys are capital B bad (led by fellow nepo spawn Ray Nicholson) killing both the bank manager the cops outside. So what does Nate do? He steals a cop car and attempts to save her himself.
“Don’t do it,” pleads an injured cop as Nate hesitates before apprehending the car. It’s hard to argue with the cop: Why not just let the professionals handle it, understaffed though they may be over the Christmas holiday? It would be a rather short and pointless movie if he did just leave it to the cops, but the impetus for this quest is a stretch to say the least. The conceit is missing some extra justification of why he felt like he was the only one who could do it, especially once he actually talks to said cops (Betty Gabriel and Matt Walsh).
Like many things in “Novocaine,” it simply exists to open more avenues for his torture. This involves a fight in a restaurant kitchen, a visit to a tattoo parlor to get more information on one of the robbers, and a stop by a booby-trapped house. The script is self-aware enough to throw in a “Home Alone” reference, though not before you’ve made one in your head.
On the heels of some bad action comedies like “Love Hurts,” “Novocaine” is pretty enjoyable. It might have been born in the same elevator pitch incubator (what if non-stop violence!), but it’s executed with some style and understanding of comedic timing. In one clever sequence, Nate persuades his psychotic captor to torture him as slowly as possible, buying time until his friend gets there as he pretends to feel the pain. “Novocaine” also kind of overstays its welcome, stretching on too long with too many endings. Still, it’s an easy, if not entirely painless, watch.
“Novocaine,” a Paramount Pictures release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “strong, bloody violence, language throughout, grisly images). Running time: 110 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
