When the revolutionary leader/psychic baby mutant Kuato said “Quaid, start the reactor” in Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 sci-fi classic “Total Recall,” I know for a fact that he wasn’t referring to actor Jack Quaid, because Jack Quaid wasn’t born yet.
Kuato couldn’t possibly have known that Quaid would one day star in an ultraviolent chase movie rom-com where he elicits stunned and screaming reactions from the audience as he pummels his fists into broken glass to fight a neo-Nazi with his makeshift bloody Wolverine claws. That is, not unless Kuato was even more psychic than advertised. I don’t know, I’m not his biographer.
I am, however, a film critic, and “Novocaine” is a film so let’s go: Jack Quaid stars as Nathan Caine, a young San Diego bank executive with two problems. The first is he’s in love with his co-worker Sherry, played by Amber Midthunder (“Prey”). The second is he has a condition called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP), which means he literally can’t feel pain. Scald his hands with hot coffee and he doesn’t even notice. I mean, don’t actually do that. He may not feel it but it’s still a grievous injury.
Sherry thinks this sounds like a superpower, and the comedy plot of “Novocaine” eventually agrees, but when we first meet Nathan he has more practical concerns. He doesn’t eat solid food because he could seriously injure or even bite off his tongue while chewing. He has to set an alarm as a reminder to go to the bathroom every three hours, because his bladder could theoretically explode if he forgets. He explains that the average life expectancy for someone with this very real condition is only 25 years, and he has been living accordingly.
“Novocaine” wades in pernicious waters with this premise, arguing that Nathan has been letting his disability prevent him from actually feeling alive. The idea is initially represented in little ways, like when Sherry gives Nathan his very first taste of pie. It’s a life-changing, life-affirming moment for him. So when bankrollers kidnap Sherry, violently dispatch the police responders and speed away from the crime scene, Nathan decides to rescue her himself, placing him in action movie scenarios in which his condition gives him unexpected, creative advantages over dangerous killers.
The film uses Nathan’s condition as an excuse to place him in remarkable, and remarkably gross, situations, like shoving his hand into boiling grease to grab a handgun, and springing outlandish “Home Alone” booby traps and barely noticing. “Novocaine” is effectively a Looney Tune. The protagonist can take endless punishment, and their obliviousness to the consequences creates a humorous disconnect.
This probably shouldn’t work as well as it does. If we’re being honest, the majority of action movies don’t deal with physical punishment in a realistic way already. It’s very common for heroes and villains alike to get in a catastrophic car accident or fall off of a building into a dumpster and just “walk it off.” Have you ever seen a movie where the hero gets shot and says it’s “just a flesh wound?” All wounds are flesh wounds, Arnold. Go to the hospital.
“Novocaine” is essentially the Black Knight scene in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” if the Black Knight was an extremely nice guy. Jack Quaid was born for a role like this. The actor’s unassuming cheerfulness provides the perfect comedic counterpoint to the film’s increasingly absurd gross-out action gags. Nathan’s motivation, not just true love but the promise of a life he’s always wanted, is convincing enough to justify taking this gauntlet of punishment in a movie this broadly comedic. Quaid’s performance, and the movie’s insistence on his character’s unlikely heroism, goes a long way towards compensating for “Novocaine’s” at least questionable depiction of disability as a genre-centric plot device.
A movie like “Novocaine” exists to strain credulity, and strain it does, but it doesn’t filter all of the lumps out. We know damn well that although Nathan is immune to pain, he could still die, or get concussed, or pass out from blood loss, or break his bones, and although eventually the film does remember that he really should probably be dead by now, a puddle of shattered bone meal barely contained within a tattered flesh sack, he probably should have been dealing with these problems a lot earlier. This is what happens when you want to make a splatstick comedy about a real-life condition in which the audience genuinely cares about the hero’s well-being. Sometimes we care so much that it’s hard to lose ourselves within the film’s cartoon universe rules.
And yet, while “Novocaine” raises interesting questions about the use of cognitive disconnect between violent humor and genuine sentimentality, the most important thing is that the film is funny. The film is extremely funny. The humor isn’t always well-thought out but Quaid is increasingly revealing himself to be a comic genius, Amber Midthunder is genuine and interesting as a performer, and even Ray Nicholson, who plays the film’s villain, has a disarming and disturbing weirdness that contributes to “Novocaine’s” tricky yet delightful tone.
Directors Robert Olsen and Dan Berk (“Villains”) know how to make scenes and situations that turn tricky contradictions into a sidesplitting motion picture comedy. Literally. People have their actual sides split open in “Novocaine” and it’s funny as hell.
