The man who coined the phrase “Life is ache” by no means met Nathan Caine. Nate is with a particularly uncommon genetic dysfunction known as “congenital insensitivity to ache analgesia” that makes him incapable of feeling any type of ache. (Yes, it’s real.) To a moviegoing public drowning in comic-book movies, that may sound like a superpower. To Nate, it’s extra curse than present.
It’s vital for an individual to really feel ache. Pain retains us alive. It tells us to maneuver our hand away from a hearth earlier than we completely harm our hand, or to go see a health care provider in order that an sickness or an an infection might be handled. Nate by no means will get these warnings, so to guard himself he lives a life coated in nearly literal bubble wrap. He by no means eats stable meals out of worry of by accident biting by means of his tongue. He tops his pencils with puddy; he has tennis balls on each door deal with and desk nook, lest he puncture himself with out noticing. When he’s not working as an assistant financial institution supervisor in San Diego, he’s avoiding hazard at residence, largely enjoying MMORPGs along with his solely buddy — a voice in his headphones that he’s by no means even met (the voice of Jacob Batalon).
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Of course, there wouldn’t be a lot of a movie if Nate (Jack Quaid) simply stayed in his home for 100 minutes. Sure sufficient, just some minutes into the motion comedy Novocaine, he lastly says sure after a lifetime of no — to an attractive and charming new teller at his financial institution named Sherry (Amber Midthunder). They exit for lunch and (gasp!) he really takes a chew of stable meals. Pretty quickly, Nate’s doing every kind of stuff that’s out of character. He meets Sherry at a bar, he takes her residence, after which, when Sherry is kidnapped throughout a financial institution theft he units off to rescue her.
Why doesn’t Nate let the police deal with it? I’m afraid you’re simply going to need to not ask that query if you wish to get pleasure from Novocaine. To respect the movie’s pluses, specifically some very intelligent motion set items constructed round Nate’s situation, additionally, you will have to endure a bunch of minuses, primarily a plot filled with fully implausible twists. I suppose if you happen to can settle for that Jack Quaid can not really feel it when he’s shot with an arrow, you may settle for {that a} financial institution robber would possibly booby entice his complete home Home Alone model for principally no cause apart from it makes an awesome place to torture Nate. Buy the ticket, take the experience, and all of that.
The script, by Lars Jacobson, oscillates between eye-rollingly foolish moments like that one, others which might be ingenious — like a scene the place one of many financial institution robbers catches Nate and tortures him for kicks, and Nate has to fake he’s in agony with the intention to preserve his attacker from realizing that that is all a part of Nate’s (admittedly not superb) survival plan. While I can’t say it at all times looks like Jacobson and administrators Dan Berk and Robert Olsen have absolutely thought by means of the mechanics of their story, it does really feel like they’ve brainstormed each attainable method they may wring comedy and physique horror out of this state of affairs.
It additionally helps that they’ve a really sport Jack Quaid as their unlikely protagonist. With his lanky physicality, he appears the a part of a dude who has by no means left his home, and he actually sells Nate’s head-over-heels attraction to Sherry. He additionally has stable chemistry with Midthunder, though the movie’s construction means they spend a big chunk of the movie aside.
I can not justify nor clarify a lot of the choices Novocaine’s characters make. Ultimately, I used to be prepared to easily allow them to wash over me like a closely medicated dental affected person, as a result of I obtained sufficient of a kick out the movie’s darkish humorousness and its surprisingly graphic violence.
Novocaine belongs to the identical cinemasochistic custom as movies like Evil Dead II and Crank, the place the viewers is invited to derive twisted pleasure from watching a heroic main man get the crap overwhelmed out of him in creative methods. It’s not so good as these movies. But by itself phrases, it’s painless sufficient. Pleasurable even.
Additional Thoughts:
-I discussed the home that’s inexplicably booby-trapped prefer it’s Macaulay Culkin’s summer time cottage. One of the traps entails a mace. Like a medieval mace! Where do you even get a mace in 2025?!?
-By the way in which, the person who mentioned “Life is ache” was the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride. (The full line is “Life is ache, your highness! Anyone who says in a different way is promoting one thing.”) Technically, we must always credit score screenwriter William Goldman for that one.
RATING: 6/10
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