Review by Sam Moffitt
In the realm of bad movies every movie geek has their favorites. I read with interest Tom Stockman’s musings on The Room, a bad movie masterpiece I have yet to see, it’s in my Netflix queue though!
Bad movies have their place in any movie geeks library. Movie watching parties can be so much fun if the movies picked are from the resumes of directors like Ed Wood, Phil Tucker, or Herschell Gordon Lewis. Laughing along with movies like this can be such a joy. The crew at Mystery Science Theatre made careers out of laughing at bad movies. Low budget crap made by amateur or semiprofessional film makers is so easy to love.
But what are we to make of a movie made by main stream, A-list Hollywood professionals, made by people with really good movies in their career, which is damn near unwatchable?
A wiser person than me once said that it takes a lot of talent, money, energy and dedication to make a really bad movie. In anything that I review for We Are Movie Geeks I look for the best, try to see the good, to see what works in any movie I watch and then review. I’m not here to slam movies, especially if they contain one once of creativity or originality, just one bit of business that lifts it out of the ordinary.
That’s why it actually pains me to say, in more ways than one, that watching Novocaine is a supremely painful, grueling experience. This is not a movie that is so bad it’s good, it’s so bad it’s hard, actually painful to watch. As painful, as well, a trip to the dentist!
Let me say first out of the gate, I like Steve Martin, hell I love Steve Martin. He hosted some of the best episodes of early Saturday Night Live. I was not a big fan of The Jerk but I loved The Man With Two Brains. I happen to think that he and John Candy, in Planes, Trains and Automobiles hit one out of the ball park and reached the dizzy heights of a Laurel and Hardy or a Charlie Chaplin film, a true classic. I honestly believe Pennies From Heaven is a masterpiece.
But Novocaine stinks on ice. Martin is also famous for playing a truly funny dentist, in Little Shop of Horrors. Novocaine is supposed to be a comedy, it is labeled as a “dark comedy”. Oh it’s dark alright, but comparing it to any of Martin’s really funny work is almost blasphemous.
There is really nothing funny about going to the dentist in the first place. I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind admitting they enjoy going to the dentist. That’s why Martin’s character in Little Shop of Horrors is so over the top funny, a singing dentist who openly admits he is a sadist.
In Novocaine Martin is a genuine dental professional, in his voice over he tells us that he has a “perfect” life, a good practice, engaged to Laura Dern, the most wonderful woman in the world. And you just know that is all going to change.
Helena Bonham Carter comes into his office as a new patient, runs a scam on him to get narcotics and then it is all downhill from there. Before it’s over he will be accused of murder, lose his practice and pull all of his own teeth (I don’t usually give out spoilers but the reason for him doing this is so insane and complicated it really doesn’t matter.) Oh what the hell, bite marks are a major part of the investigation and evidence against Martin’s dentist. In fact bite marks in murder investigations was the inspiration for making the movie according to the director/writer David Atkins. Sound like the basis for a rollicking good comedy?
And that’s it, that is the whole movie, now you don’t have to bother seeing it. I picked Novocaine up at a library here in St. Petersburg. My fiancé, Radah and I watched it on a date night. I thought any movie with Steve Martin, clearly labeled a comedy, would have some laughs in it. Shows how wrong I can be. We watched Novocaine start to finish and never laughed one time. Radah accuses me regularly of laughing too much at some comedies. Anything with Will Ferrell or Kristin Wiig sends me into hysterics. I wish we had watched one of their movies instead of Novocaine.
The main problem, the movie runs along the lines of a thriller, innocent man makes one wrong move and ends up accused of murder and running for his life. It might have worked as a straight up thriller with Richard Gere or Tom Cruise in the lead. With Martin in the lead this movie is so wrong I don’t know where to begin to describe the sheer unadulterated wrongness of it.
Start with no humor in a so called comedy, that’s enough right there. But every bit of the plot is so cliché, I called every plot twist two or three minutes before the movie did. We are asked to believe that Martin’s character, engaged to Laura Dern, (Laura Dern mind you !) would risk everything by getting involved with Helena Bonham Carter, one of the few actresses working today that is just not very attractive, to me anyway. Does she look weird to you? She does to me, and in this movie she appears particularly skanky ( to be fair the role requires it,) which still makes Martin’s behavior all the more ridiculous. Any man with any knowledge of hygiene would be reluctant to shake hands with this woman much less go to bed with her. Their love scenes really are not pleasant, not a pretty sight, I’m so sorry to report.
And then comes that ending with Martin pulling all of his own teeth! Years ago Dan Rowan and Dick Martin were in a movie, a few years before they hit it big on Laugh-In, called Once Upon a Horse, a really lame western comedy. I remember seeing it on St. Louis television and being appalled at one gag they did. For some reason they discover they can make money selling teeth to a dentist, I think in order for dentures to be made. They get a pair of pliers and corner an old man and pull all of his teeth out to sell to this dentist. Does that sound funny to you? It’s not, trust me it is not funny at all, it is horrifying, in their movie and in this miserable concoction called Novocaine.
The really sad part of it is, there are extras on the dvd, the usual making of featurettes, deleted scenes and previews. In the making of feature all concerned parties give out with the usual talk about how much they loved the script, how original and fresh it was and how they had to make this movie, loved working with each other and they actually sound proud of what they accomplished. For once these kinds of comments from professional actors sound really phony and hollow, well, more phony than they usually do.
Well, I have to go, I have an appointment to see my chiropractor, and I am really looking forward to it.
