When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

While labeled as a comedy "Novocaine" is not your typical Steve Martin comedy. And while there are elements of comedy throughout the movie this was actually more of a crime mystery. And it was actually a quite nice change of pace for Steve Martin.The movie is about Frank Sangster, a dentist whose life is rosy red and dandy. When he, against his better judgment, prescribes Demetol to an unusual client, he suddenly finds himself under suspicion and murder. One thing leads to the other and Franks is well in over his head.The storyline was actually quite good and well thought through, keeping the audience guessing at what is going on. Director David Atkins actually managed to put together a very entertaining movie.One of the things that really lifted up this movie was the impressive cast, which included Steve Martin, Laura Dern, Elias Koteas and of course Helena Bonham Carter. There is also two great cameos by Kevin Bacon and Keith David."Novocaine" is a unique Steve Martin movie that should definitely be seen if you enjoy Steve Martin movies.

The most remarkable thing about this poor film is that the enormously talented Steve Martin is, by far, the worst thing about it.Novocaine is a mishmash of film noir and humor. Frank Sangster (Steve Martin) is a successful dentist who is engaged to his hygienist Jean (Laura Dern), a seemingly All-American blonde. The only burr under Frank's saddle is his no account loser of a brother, Harlan (Elias Koteas), who's moved into Frank's house. They have the sort of relationship where the good brother always feels a little guilty that he's better off than the bad brother. Jean and Harlan don't get along but other than that, Frank's life seems quite squared away.That is until Susan (Helena Bonham Carter) shows up in Frank's dentist chair one morning. Susan does have a bad tooth, but what she really wants is to scam some drugs out of Frank. He knows that right away, but goes along with it because he is instantly and irresistibly attracted to her. Susan and Frank have sex, she gets even more drugs out of him, and then Susan's incestuous and violent brother Duane (Scott Caan) gets involved. Frank also has to deal with a federal agent who shows up and wants to see the drugs Susan and Duane have stolen, but Frank doesn't want to turn Susan in. Then someone shows up dead in Frank's house with Frank's teeth marks all over them and Frank has to figure out who's framing him and what he can do about it.Steve Martin is simply bad in this movie and I don't have the slightest idea why. The man can certainly act but he gives a wooden, shallow performance here that undermines the whole film. There is one moment, when someone Frank loves turns up dead, where Martin shows some believable emotion. For the rest of the movie, though, it's like someone is forcing him to play this character and he's just going through the motions to get it over with. The noir hero has to be a bundle of lust and fear and anger and shame and there's none of that in Frank Sangster. And since the audience needs to really care about Frank for anything else in Novocaine to work, none of it really does.Of course, very little of Novocaine would work even if Martin gave the greatest performance in noir history. There's no real rhyme or reason to the mystery of this story, though it is well constructed. As more and more things go wrong and Frank gets deeper and deeper in trouble, everything fits together fairly well. The problem is that there are moments of comedy, black comedy and even slapstick comedy laced throughout the movie and it completely ruins any attempt at creating a tone or mood. It's as though this script started out as either completely serious noir or as an overtly comedic take on the genre but as things went along, someone decided it either needed more funny stuff or more serious stuff and just crammed it in wherever they felt like it. For example, there are two scenes where Kevin Bacon, of all people, shows up as a Hollywood actor tagging along with the police investigating Frank. Those scenes serve absolutely no purpose other than getting the audience to say "Hey look! It's Kevin Bacon!" This weird dissonance extends to the two lead actresses. Laura Dern plays this very broad, deliberately mockable character that could have fit in with Christopher Guest's Best in Show or A Mighty Wind. But Helena Bonham Carter plays her character relatively straight, trying to be genuinely dramatic and all that.It also doesn't help the film that Frank's supposed to be completely screwed up over Susan and Bonham Carter just isn't sexy. She's certainly pretty and she certainly can act but she does not have sensual charisma on screen. I've seen her in other roles where she does a fine job in other respects, but there's always something cold about her and she's positively frigid here. She even goes topless in Novocaine and it still doesn't help.Elias Koteas probably gives the best performance in this movie, but his character is barely more than a plot device that's introduced at the beginning and then forgotten about until needed for the end.Novocaine also has the worst voice-over narration since Blade Runner. You know, that narration that Harrison Ford supposedly read badly on purpose so they wouldn't put in the movie, but they used it anyway? That narration that was eliminated from all those special edition director's cuts of Blade Runner they've churned out? The narration in Novocaine is that bad. Steve Martin could have been reading out of a an instruction manual for all the emotion and energy he conveys.Novocaine is one of those bad films that would've been better if it had been even worse. There's nothing here so egregiously horrible you can enjoy making fun of it. Unless you fancy seeing Steve Martin do probably the worst acting job in his career, that is.

Whatever Steve Martin is in is probably going to be good, and this one was. It was a slow starter but it finally got off to a fast moving film. Steve, the dentist, was taken in by a drug user and when he gave her a prescription for 5 pills, he learned that she had added a "O" to his figure and made it 50. Once he started lying, he had to keep on lying to cover up the other lies. He was apparently an innocent victim and didn't know it for a long time. There was one murder of the addicts brother, and another murder of Steve's brother. He finally figured out the one person who could get all the information together and and set him up to be convicted. When he pulled his own teeth and replaced them in another false set, we could really see the sense of it all. The end was the greatest surprise of all.

Steve Martin stars in an usual kind of movie and the expectations are failure, but this is not true and the movie is great. The story follows a dentist getting in deep troubles with a whore while he is married.Well, the movie has many merits. It has great thrills, great suspense moments and of course black humor which is something I liked a lot and I believe Novocaine wouldn't have been the same movie without it. It's just Martin and you connect him with humor and laughs and I really started respecting him as a comedian after watching his classic roles in The Jerk and The Lonely Guy. His acting is superb while his role is casual. More of those characters that are on the line between positive and negative, but after all interesting for the audience.The movie itself as I said is indeed something to remember and something fresh, mostly cause of the successful mixture between most entertain kind of movie genres and of course every day life drama scenes which are of course garbage, but the movie is not supposed to be a drama after all and this is why I close my eyes for the failed try of dramatic influence over the viewer.Rating:8/10