Novocaine

Pre-thoughts

If you couldn’t feel pain, what would you do? I think I would start by going to the dentist without freaking out. 

This is a movie that I have been ready to see for a good second now. It isn’t one of the biggest things on my must-see list for 2025, but it’s big enough that I’m excited for a good time. The movie is about this dude who can’t feel pain (hence the question.) He falls in love and she winds up getting kidnapped at a bank robbery. He’s so in love that he takes matters into his own hands to rescue her. How romantic.

It kind of sounds like Deadpool, now that I think about it. But the plot line isn’t what I’m excited about. What I’m most looking forward to is the “superpower” of not being able to feel pain. What I’m looking for to make this experience for me is the creative use of the ability. I have seen a few things from the trailer that make me think that it’ll deliver, but we’ll see how well it meets my expectations. Seeing as the movie, as of now, has an 80% on rotten tomatoes, I think I might be in for a good time. But I know me, and sometimes a good review means I won’t like it. I highly doubt it, but there’s only one way to know for sure.  

My only real concern is the fact that my love of gore has shrunk over the years. I’m curious if it will wind up being so much that it ruins the movie for me, or if everything is done creatively enough that it will be fun. Heck, maybe it won’t be brutally graphic at all. I doubt it, but there’s only one way to find out. It might wind up being an amazing comedy, the likes of which I haven’t seen in a while. 

The Verdict

Yeah, that scratched an itch really well. But not quite the one I was expecting, actually. The whole “man can’t feel pain” premise was executed really well. Only gripe I would really give is that they gave away far too many of the jokes in the trailer. I wish they had only teased one or two, followed by the plotline, and called it a day. It’s not to say that I had seen all of it before entering the theater, but the best ones were definitely used to get butts into seats. It sucks how that happens. There were a few more good moments, though. They just didn’t feel like the best ones. 

On top of the comedic moments, the movie did deliver on the “creative use of power” thing that I mentioned before. I don’t want to spoil it, but there are a few moments that made me go “huh, wouldn’t have thought of using it like that.” Of course, there are more than a few that you could see coming from a mile away. Honestly, several were so obvious, you could probably write a half-decent list of tricks they’d try before you even walked into the theater. Maybe you should make a game of bingo out of it. Might be a bit of fun. 

What I wasn’t expecting to enjoy was the subtleties of the power. Jack Quaid does a great job of embodying a man who actually doesn’t know what feeling pain is like. It isn’t just in the torture scenes where he pretends to hurt. It’s in the fight scenes, when he takes a punch and barely reacts. I wonder if that was tricky to pull off–it looked like he barely even winced! It was cool because the way he physically reacted with a blank-slate face was incredibly believable. 

Speaking of Jack Quaid’s acting, I wasn’t expecting to like the character in the ways that I did. I knew of the dude from The Boys and Scream 5, but I didn’t realize that I would like him this much. This was actually the highlight of the movie for me. He played a specific breed of nobody that I hadn’t seen on the big screen before. At least, not in a while. He’s a guy who’s known, being the assistant manager and all, but also doesn’t have much of a life. It’s hard to put my finger on how that works exactly, but it came through beautifully. As we get a fuller introduction to the character, it becomes clear that he’s…well…a bit of a loser. But it’s more of a subtle thing, rather than a big, dramatic deal. 

I am, of course, comparing him to my previously-unrivaled favorite loser: Peter Parker, as portrayed by Andrew Garfield. I am giving Novocaine a slot in my top-5 favorite losers. The way he plays it out felt like it was pretty close to my own life at times. The way he can function well enough to do his job, yet seem completely lost when someone wants to connect in any other way. I really felt like I had been there. Then when the action kicked up, it made his drive all the more relatable. 

Speaking of action, this movie had some good fight scenes. But it isn’t just epic shots and clever decisions that make these scenes entertaining. I loved watching novocaine grow as a character within the context of these fight scenes. There’s one scene, in particular, which becomes his “the beast is out” moment. It’s glorious, and I almost cried at how beautiful it was. (Actually, I wanted to do five minutes of Dragon Ball Z-style shouting, but I had to be quiet for the movie and all. Crying was the next best option.) 

I also liked his love-interest. She wasn’t just a pretty face. A lot of times, dudes will drop a line about how this person suddenly gave their life meaning and made it better in some significant way. Most of the time, I get annoyed when they talk like this. It’s so fake, so corny. But with this movie, she actually had a real role to play in his life. She actually does make a difference. A leading lady doesn’t just have to be a damsel in distress. You just have to execute the role right, and this movie really did. 

And it’s this heartfelt love story that weaves itself in between “no-pain novocaine” jokes. It makes for a well-rounded experience. Well, I say well-rounded loosely. There’s still a lot of gore. If your gore-tolerance isn’t up there, then this movie won’t be for you. It doesn’t feel like a horror movie, but you can’t truly write jokes about not feeling pain without doing a few things that…you know…ought to bring pain.

And lastly, we have the plot. Beforehand, I scoffed at it for being a pretty basic story, almost like a deadpool-like. I was wrong. Obviously, I’m not going to give it away, but it goes to some places that I wasn’t expecting. A few twists and turns are thrown in that keep things from feeling stale. They had one, in particular, that made me very satisfied, indeed. It doesn’t feel stale or predictable at all. It all felt right from start to finish. 

It all reminds me of the call to adventure. When I usually talk about it with people, it’s usually in the context of stories. But I think the same rules apply to life. How many movies start with that same old place of bleak boredom, wondering if this is all there is to life? It’s used so often because it works. We all feel that way sometimes. Trouble is, we don’t really want to jump into a hurricane and risk losing everything we had in the first place. 

Eventually the hunger for more out of life wins out. We start saying “no” to all the routine, monotonous things that we want and strike out in search of that something more. I wouldn’t say it’s love every single time, but it’s something live and vibrant like love. Something bigger than us that sweeps us off our feet and carries us into that something more that we were craving from life. And what winds up grabbing us and where we let it take us is what we become known for as people. 

This is a great movie, and I think anyone who can handle the gore levels should make sure they get out to see it. If this was a hard “no” for you for any reason other than the gore, I encourage you to reconsider. I’m not going to push too hard, but it’s definitely a good one. And let me know your thoughts if you wind up seeing it. 

Until Next Time

May Peace be your Guide.