Critics reviews

[Novocaine] has got solid fights, gnarly kills, and a sick sense of humor, but its secret weapon is something in short supply in this genre: Genuine heart - and that heart is all thanks to Quaid.

[The film's] premise is plucked straight out of the imagination of a middle school boy... It’s a repetitive bloodbath without the adrenaline of some action marathons like John Wick. Instead of wondering how much more Nathan Caine can endure, I’m left wondering how much more Novocaine I can stomach.

The nonstop cadence of manic violence and gore does lose some of its visceral charge after a while, mainly because it’s hard to keep going in such a cartoonish direction without experiencing some exhaustion. These kinds of films are already built on minimizing pain, not just for our hero but for all the characters.

“Novocaine” can be hard to watch, but in just the way you want. The brutality doesn’t hold back.. It’s deliciously gratuitous. The injuries Nate inflicts and obtains range from hilarious to harrowing, and Lars Jacobson’s smartly written script juggles the spectrum of tone well.

[Novocaine screws] its three genres together so awkwardly that it tends to limp... Of the torment Quaid endures, his hardest challenge is straddling the tone.

The [film's] violent comedy works most of all through Quaid... But what keeps it from deflating into tiresome shtick (which it very nearly does) is Quaid with his gawky, boyish charisma, an actual tough guy who just doesn’t know how to act it.

The almost nonstop fighting and Mr. Quaid’s low-key charm are enough to make the movie a serviceable action offering. Moreover, the script, though focused on wacky spasms of violence, has a strong human element at its core.

Even with a gimmick engineered to orchestrate endless bursts of Looney Tunes-style hyperviolence, “Novocaine” lives up to its name, all right — a tedious action-comedy so numbingly bland, you feel the pain of its 110-minute run time even as its protagonist can’t feel a thing.

On the heels of some bad action comedies like “Love Hurts,” “Novocaine” is pretty enjoyable. It might have been born in the same elevator pitch incubator (what if non-stop violence!), but it’s executed with some style and understanding of comedic timing... It’s an easy, if not entirely painless, watch.

[Quaid's] charm isn’t enough to power us through another quippy and egregiously thin little lark, hinged on a one-joke premise that stops being funny far too soon.

[Novocaine] is too anodyne to make something special from the unique premise. The world Nathan inhabits is sparse, with the directors opting not to do anything with the film’s Christmastime setting, offering bland cinematography filled with empty space and clichéd dialogue that fails to carry the movie through its early stretches.

Novocaine starts with a premise that is Crank-like in its absurdity, deepens it with feeling, and then rams full speed ahead through a litany of stupidities.