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Novocaine Movie Review

Novocaine is a 2025 action comedy film directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen and starring Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder. It’s a very disappointing movie.

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“What the fuck is that?“

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When the girl of his dreams gets kidnapped, a man turns his inability to feel pain into an unexpected advantage as he fights a bunch of thugs to get her back. This is one of those high-concept movies that rely heavily on their concepts to carry them through the finish line. This is, thus, not a movie per say, but just one idea stretched to a feature-length project.

The result is a slight and messy movie that had no business being two hours long. The second half was entirely uninvolving to me as this is where the film devolved into an action vehicle with never-ending fight scenes that quickly bored me to death. The action is well executed, but I would have appreciated a more serious and less frenetic approach to storytelling. The violence was also overwhelming and nowhere near as interesting as the film clearly thinks it is.

Novocaine is worth seeing for its performances and its first act. This is where the film fired on all cylinders and was quite a lot of fun to watch. Operating as a romantic comedy of sorts, the movie opened with a memorable date between the two leads that was playful and utterly charming. The ending was also fine, but the remainder of the movie lost all of the charm that was present in those first thirty minutes.

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Jack Quaid had a terrific 2025 with this film and ‘Companion’. Although this is an inferior movie in comparison to that much more interesting genre-bender, Quaid himself was excellent. He’s a charismatic young actor who also has a solid comedic delivery and he sold his action scenes well too. These two movies put him in two very different roles and he delivered, showing some range. I also loved seeing Amber Midthunder of ‘Prey’ fame. She was very likable here.