Ok, Novocaine is a pretty good title. Personally, I would have preferred CIPA Hero. Maybe that’ll be the subtitle for the sequel, though Jack Quaid might not exactly want to go through the beating that he took in this one for the sake of the audience. His pain, our pleasure, and delightful amusement, I guess.
Quaid plays Nathan Caine, a man diagnosed with congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA). Eg, he can’t feel any pain even if real damage is being done to his body. His parents (more fun to think of Jack’s real life ‘rents Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid doing this) scared him into a quiet isolated existence playing video games with Roscoe (Jacob Batalon), his only online friend and being an assistant VP at a local San Diego bank. Jack is encouraged to get out there more by Sherry Margrave (Amber Midthunder), whom he’s been smitten with since the day she started working there. After a really fun date night, Jack/Sherry’s honeymoon is cut short by Santa suit wearing bank robbers, who take Sherry as a hostage, forcing Jack out of his little cocoon and into the painless superhero he’s been training to be.
Novocaine at least delivers what the title suggests. The movie does a decent job sprinkling in the CIPA jokes during the fights. The big trailer sequence in the fast food kitchen is probably the highlight, as the novice Nathan is trying to fight semi-novice bank robbers using more and more elaborate pain gags involving oils, stovetops, pots, pans, etc. Most importantly, each fight ends as an elaborate punchline to the movie’s broad joke, going as far as a painless man would go to end a fight in the most visceral, brutal fashion imaginable. Yes the sequences could have been more creative, but there’s at least 1 amusing thing in each of Novocaine’s battles, keeping you engaged as the “story” slowly detaches from reality.
The biggest selling point for the film are the two leads, ready to be in the spotlight. Jack Quaid has been working his way to this role. As such, he was ready to be the leading man he was born to be, giving Nathan an affable squirrely charm that wins fights as much with his words as he does with his fists, to the audience’s delight. Amber Midthunder is every bit ready for her breakout too, without the nepotism. Her acting flexibility to be tough, funny, vulnerable, depending on what the scene is, gives Hollywood another opportunity to see why she should be cast in more things. Surrounding our leads are wonderfully able supporting characters, like the overqualified Matt Walsh and Betty Gabriel as over it San Diego Detectives.
The more I see of Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder, I like. So let’s use Novocaine as a rocket ship like trajectory for the both of them. Oooh, I have another title: why couldn’t Jack have stolen his parent’s title, Flesh and Bone? That’s the PERFECT title for Novocaine! Dang it, well there’s the better sequel tag line I guess.