Nature is Healing: A (spoiler-laden) Review of Novocaine

Okay. This review *WILL* have spoilers for the movie. They’re not going to give away the biggest plot points but the very fact that there are plot points to give away is, itself, a spoiler of sorts so if you’re curious as to whether or not you want to watch it after having seen the (mostly spoiler-free!) trailer above, just know the following takes on the movie:

1. It’s really violent. Like, it’s got gore. You will find yourself saying “Dang!” several times during the movie when various awful things happen and there are several various awful things that happen.

2. It’s kinda funny. I mean, there’s gore, but it’s absurd. At one point a particularly awful thing happens but it’s played for laughs. And… yeah. It’s kinda funny. This is not a movie that takes itself too seriously.

3. It’s got romance, action, body horror, a charming lead, bad guys that you want to see get theirs, a love interest that will make you say “holy cow, was that the chick from Prey?”

AND HERE’S WHERE I GET INTO A MINOR SPOILER FOR THE MOVIE SO PLEASE PRESS BACK NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED BEYOND THE TRAILER ABOVE

4. It’s got cops that were written well after the whole George Floyd/ACAB moment had passed.

You know the movie Renfield? A movie about Dracula’s ghoul who runs around during daylight hours on his behalf, who find himself going to group therapy for people in codependent relationships and decides to start living a more emotionally healthy life? Well, the b-plot of that movie involved Awkwafina being a cop who had to clean up the corrupt police department with the help of the folks in the a-plot.

And so you’re sitting there thinking “This was written in 2021, wasn’t it?”

Well, Novocaine was *NOT* written during that window. It could have been written in the 80s, the 90s, or, yes, in the current year. The cops made a handful of mistakes, you see them make a less than perfect assumption… but you understand why they made that assumption (it was by the book) and then you go on to see the main characters drive the plot forward rather than the police do it.

So I found myself somewhat shocked by the level of violence in the movie (there was more than I expected), pleased by the level of humor in the movie (seriously, it’s almost a comedy instead of a dark comedy), amped by the action in the movie (there are some fun chase scenes and some good fight scenes), and all in all quite pleased that I saw this one in the theater instead of on a screen a handful of feet away.

Was it a good date movie? Well, as with anything, it depends on your date. I saw it with Maribou who also liked it. She doesn’t mind Body Horror flicks and the fact that this was comedy version of the same was icing on top of the cake. I made a joke about how it wasn’t set in 1890 with people wearing corsets (well, I had a few more adjectives in there) and Maribou told me “I like lots of movies, okay?” and so it has the seal of approval from The Birdhouse.

We also saw it by going to The Alamo Roadhouse Cinemas where you have fully reclining movie chairs and TV trays and waitstaff comes up and takes your order and serves you a “Cluck Norris Chicken Sandwich” halfway through the first act. We got a bunch of appetizers and our entrees and I got a glass of wine and we ended up spending a little more than a hundred bucks (before the tip) on tickets and dinner and so it’s not, like, something that you can do *EVERY* week but if you haven’t gone out on a date in a month or so, you should check out the Alamo cinema in your neck of the woods and take your main squeeze with ya.

Maybe see something a little more appropriate for dinnertime than “Body Horror” but… hey. I’m not going to tell you how to live.

In any case, Novocaine had a nice little romantic subplot that opened into the action main plot, it had a hero that I liked, a supporting cast that was engaging, a great fight scene in a kitchen and another in a tattoo parlor, a contest of wills in a booby-trapped house, a fun little car chase scene, and a nice little denouement that wrapped up everything in a tight little bow and left you thinking “there’s no way that this thing has a sequel… unless…” and, hey, if you see it in the theater, that makes it just a little more likely that it will have one.

I’m not saying that you, yes you, ought to see it as much as I’m saying that if the trailer has you saying “that looks like it might be good but I know that trailers can be deceiving…” well, then know that the trailer isn’t particularly deceiving and you’ll walk away from the movie thinking “that was exactly as much dumb fun as I had hoped it would be and, get this, I didn’t feel preached to even once”.

So if you are interested *AT ALL* in Action/Comedy/Body Horror… check out Novocaine.