“Novocaine” - About a Boy (or Pain and Gain).

If you’ve ever wondered what typecasting is, I give to you Jack Quaid. Quaid is one of the stars of Amazon Prime’s series The Boys. In The Boys, Quaid plays a nerdy, lovesick man putting himself in harm’s way for the girl he loves. He’s affable, well-meaning, and even gets superpowers for a short time. In the new movie Novocaine, Quaid stars as Nate Caine, a nerdy, affable, well-meaning, lovesick man putting himself in harm’s way for the girl he loves. Nate even has a quasi-superpower - congenital insensitivity to pain and anhydrosis (CIPA). In layman’s terms, he can’t feel pain. CIPA is actually a real and extremely rare genetic disorder, though I’m not sure anyone afflicted by CIPA has thought about a life fighting crime.

Nate is an assistant manager at a bank and has child-proofed his entire life. Tennis balls covering desk corners, putty covering pencil tips, and a little do-it-yourself stopper on his shower handle to prevent the water from becoming too hot, and eating nothing but pureed food smoothies to avoid potentially biting through and swallowing his own tongue. He can still play computer games in his spare time though, so he’s doing juuuust fine in life.

Nate’s life becomes a whole lot more dangerous when two things happen. The first is his crush, a bank teller named Sherry (Amber Midthunder), asks him out on a date, which he nervously accepts. After Nate describes his condition to her, she convinces him to try a bite of cherry pie (subtle, no?), then takes him back to his place to find out if he can feel sensations other than pain, if you know what I mean (subtle, no?).

The second thing that happens is Nate’s bank gets robbed and Sherry is kidnapped by the bandits. After a bunch of cops are gunned down by the bad guys, Nate determines that Sherry is his only hope. After strapping a tourniquet on a bleeding cop, he grabs the cop’s gun and car and takes off after the fleeing robbers. At this point, the question isn’t what injuries will happen to Nate, but what injuries won’t happen to Nate?

The beauty of the can’t-feel-pain concept is it allows us to suspend our disbelief that Nate can keep going whenever he takes a hit. All of us have been annoyed during one action movie or another where characters endure injuries that would incapacitate them in reality, but which barely slow them down in the film. Take John Wick, for example, who can be shot multiple times, thrown down two hundred feet of concrete stairs, and fall from multiple stories onto parked cars with barely more than a scrape and still at 100% fighting strength. With Nate, we accept why he can keep going as the injuries stack up, cringe at the damage being done to him, and laugh at the jokes that come with that damage. Yes, it’s okay to laugh, that’s part of the fun of this movie.

Even better is that the filmmakers (written by Lars Jacobson and directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen) don’t let the entire movie just turn into a funhouse of doom that Nate must survive. To be fair, there is a scene where Nate must navigate and survive a literal house filled with booby traps. How else are they going to fit a crossbow and medieval mace into this movie? But after Nate chases down and fights the first of the three bad guys immediately after the bank heist, Nate has to track down where the other two have taken Sherry. This slows the movie down between the action scenes, allowing both Nate and the audience to catch their breath and Nate to patch up his wounds.

While some viewers may tire of the conveyor belt of injuries, the film does a really good job of not going completely overboard with them. The film doesn’t go full Deadpool or Wolverine by chopping off Nate’s body parts, though it does toe the line occasionally. But when it does, it’s usually to wring comedy out of it, like when Nate pretends to be in pain while being tortured by a bad guy, or to induce a collective cringe from the audience. I won’t spoil any of those for you, but if you’ve seen The Boys, it’s like that but without the sexual stuff.

Overall, I really enjoyed the film. The pacing is good, the practical effects and stunts are great, the plot is simple without being rote, and the actors are all game for making this thing work. The only criticism I have is the film is being partially distributed in 4DX theaters. What’s 4DX, you ask? Great question. I didn’t know either until my seat punched me in the kidney. That is not an exaggeration. The first time Nate gets punched, I thought the person behind me kicked my seat. Then it happened again and realization dawned on me. The whole movie was going to be like that. The seats (connected on platforms in sets of four) gyrated and shook around like a carnival ride. All this while fans blew air in our faces from our seats and from large fans attached to the walls. Thankfully, the water sprayers in the seats were unneeded for this particular movie (or they were dry). While the 4DX was a little fun at first, the novelty quickly wore off and the ride just became distracting. At one point, I legitimately wondered if I needed a lap belt and if a small speaker in my seat was going to advise me to keep my arms and legs inside the ride vehicle at all times. Unlike Nate, if my seat ejected me, I’d feel some pain.

Rating: Don’t ask for any money back unless the seats made you spill your concessions.

“Scream (2022)” - Old Scream, new Scream, we all scream for no more Scream.

I know what you’re thinking - isn’t this Scream 5? I’m obligated to tell you that the official title of this movie is Scream. Yes, it is confusing. Yes, it is indeed the fifth movie in the Scream franchise and, yes, the other sequels did indeed have numbers in their titles. I actually thought this new Scream did as well, subtly hidden in the title as a roman numeral V in the middle of the M. Turns out, the original Scream had that same design in the M, but it’s actually a knife. So, no, Scream not-Five’s title is not clever in any way possible. Incidentally, this is the main problem with the movie - not being clever in any way possible.

(SPOILER ALERT - Run away now if you don’t want this movie spoiled. Even to the basement. By yourself.)

If you haven’t seen a Scream movie and you enjoy mildly scary movies that are really predictable and are also aware of themselves, you might like Scream not-Five. To be honest, you should actually go watch the original Scream. Scream not-Five is like the first clone of Michael Keaton’s character in Multiplicity. Loud, obnoxious, and exceptionally full of itself. Scream not-Five is so far up its own ass that it thinks creating the word requel - a portmanteau of the words reboot and sequel - is so ingenious that it will go on at length to tell you about it. When I say Scream not-Five is aware of itself, I mean to the point where Deadpool would be embarrassed.

Let’s be clear on this whole requel idea. There is no such thing. To be sure, Scream not-Five will go so far as to literally define a requel for us - a franchise entry that features a new cast of characters, while also bringing back original characters, in a story that happens after the previous movies, and making references to things that happened in the previous movies - in order to convince us a requel is a thing. How is that not just a sequel? That’s literally the definition of a sequel. A reboot can only be a reboot if the all of the original canon is thrown out the window. The Amazing Spider-Man was a reboot. The only thing that can be argued as evidence that Scream not-Five is a reboot is that it’s been eleven years since Scream 4. Oh, and the title doesn’t have a number in it. Guess what Scream not-Five - that makes you a sequel. Maybe you’d realize that if you weren’t so busy trying to be so aware of yourself.

At this point, I’d normally start to tell you about the plot and how the movie begins, but since we’re already three paragraphs in, I’ll try to make it brief. Scream. That’s it. They just made the first movie all over again. Hot lead actress (Melissa Barrera) and boyfriend (Jack Quaid)? Check. Opening scene where Ghostface calls a hot girl (Jenna Ortega) to chat scary movies, then skewer her? Check. Group of high school friends in which at least one of them is the killer and the others probably die? Check. Ghostface is really two killers? Check. One of the high school kids (Jasmin Savoy Brown) lecturing everyone about the rules of scary movies? Check. David Arquette, Courteney Cox, and Neve Campbell? Check. Party at Stu’s house (one of the original killers in Scream) where the climax takes place? Ugh!! Check! And if any of that manages to slip past you, don’t worry - multiple characters will make sure to tell you about it every chance they get.

In all fairness, it’s not a shot-for-shot remake. The new characters have different names. The lead character, Sam (Barrera), is a few years out of high school, as is her boyfriend, Richie (Quaid). The movie know it all is a girl (though literally related to the original know-it-all, Randy). Um, the stabbings and killings are in different places and...uh...slightly more gruesome, I guess. Oh, and the characters all have cell phones and the Internet now. See? It’s as different as night and...later that night.

I’d like to tell you that other components of the film make up for the complete lack of creativity, but they really don’t. The original three actors look bored and tired. Actually, Arquette and Campbell looked that way. Cox looked like a deranged wax copy of herself who forgot how to act. I don’t mean to dwell on her looks, but it was impossible not to stare at her since I’d already seen this movie back in 1996. The rest of the cast was fine, but not good enough that they made me want any of them to live to the next sequel.

But the worst part of this whole movie are the most important parts of any slasher flick - who is the killer and what is the killer’s motivation? All of the previous Screams tied the killer’s motivation to relationships with the other characters. Like everything else, Scream not-Five makes sure to remind you of that through one (or more) monologues. Ironically, the motivation is the one thing Scream not-Five doesn’t copy from the original and it’s as uninspired as the rest of the film; having nothing to do with relationships to the killers. And the identity of the killers? The film all but carves the word killer on the killers’ foreheads through a combination of dialogue and acting choices, then ridicules the surviving characters - and anyone in the audience who hasn’t figured out who the killer are - for not figuring out who the killers are. Maybe they would have if they hadn’t fallen asleep during the lectures.

Like I said, if you’ve never seen a Scream movie, you might be entertained, maybe even mildly surprised by Scream not-Five. If you can get past multiple characters over-explaining the shit out of their own movie, you’ve got a chance. But, if you have seen a Scream movie, you will likely be bored by Scream not-Five and wonder why you are still sitting in the theater after having identified the killers twenty minutes in, and especially after recognizing that a requel is not a thing.

Rating: Ask for eleven dollars back if only because it’s a requel with an S.