3.5

Summary

Gleefully embracing cartoon logic, this painkiller delivers a wildly entertaining, blood-soaked romp with a surprising amount of heart.

Dan Berk and Robert Olsen’s NOVOCAINE NO PAIN, known in its home territory simply as Novocaine—and, adorably, as Mr. No Pain in Germany—follows a string of their horror films. Yet their latest has more in common with hyperkinetic animation, sending its protagonist on a comically bloody revenge-rescue mission.

Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid) leads an insular life due to a congenital insensitivity that prevents him from feeling physical pain. But when his coworker—and unrequited love—Sherry (Amber Midthunder) is kidnapped by a gang of bank robbers dressed as Santa Claus, he throws caution to the wind and uses his condition to try and get her back.

While Taken was far from the first vigilante film of its kind, in the 17 years since its release (yes, 17), countless films have ridden that bandwagon to mid-budget thrills. The gimmick of Caine’s condition—an actual autosomal recessive disorder called congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA)—mainly serves as an excuse for increasingly outlandish and bloody scenarios.

Each of Caine’s encounters with a bad guy, structured like a series of level-based standoffs, ups the ante on the violence. Just when you start wondering how the inability to feel pain could possibly be an advantage, he’s shoving his hand into a deep fryer to retrieve a gun or covering his fists in glass to create murder mittens. Yes, it stretches belief—he might not feel pain, but the body can only take so much, surely? But questioning the logic here is as futile as asking how Wile E. Coyote keeps surviving Acme anvils to the head.

It’s also incredibly funny—often disarmingly so. Berk and Olsen wield violence like Sam Raimi, pushing it so far over the top that you can’t help but laugh. A scene where Caine winds up in a booby-trapped house feels ripped straight from the Looney Tunes playbook, while a brawl in a tattoo parlour against a gargantuan foe punctuates the messy bloodshed with gleeful absurdity.

The chemistry between Quaid and Midthunder is effortlessly charming. Indeed, the film’s first act plays out almost like a traditional romance. Quaid brings an affable energy, a stark contrast to his recent creep in Companion, and not a million miles from the loveable loser persona of Boimler, whom he voices in Star Trek: Lower Decks. After her star-making turn in Prey, it’s a shame Midthunder isn’t headlining another studio action vehicle, but her performance here offers up a few surprises that showcase her range beyond the genre.

By the time the film reaches its chaotic car chase and smackdown finale, if you’re not fully on board, you never will be. But if the whoops and hollers from my cinema session were any indication, once NOVOCAINE NO PAIN finds its audience, they’ll be very appreciative of its heartfelt ridiculousness. Caine may feel nothing, but it would take a truly insensitive cinemagoer not to feel at least a tiny bit of joy from this live-action cartoon.