Novocaine is another take on the “gormless schmuck discovers he is capable of great violence when his girl is threatened” genre. The twist in Novocaine is that the schmuck, Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid), has a very rare condition where he is incapable of feeling pain.

At the start of the film he is working in a nothing bank job, with only one friend, Roscoe (Jacob Batalon), with whom he plays video games online but has never met in real life. His horizons open up when he is smitten by the vivacious Shirley (Amber Midthunder), a junior employee at the office who takes him out for lunch and coaxes him into eating a piece of pie (dangerous for Nathan, as when he eats solid food he risks chewing his own tongue off). The morning following a successful date, the bank is attacked by a gang of criminals who abduct Shirley. Not willing to trust in the police, he sets off to rescue her himself.

As you would expect from the premise, most of the appeal in Novocaine comes from its fight scenes, which are animated by very slapstick energy, as Nathan plunges his fists into boiling oil, rolls them in broken glass, or deliberately electrocutes himself, always with a hapless deadpan reaction. The fight scenes are fairly entertaining, and a little stomach-turning at times.

I had mixed thoughts about Jack Quaid as a lead. He is “likeable,” and the early scenes with him and Shirley are not without a certain corny appeal. However, I never really bought that this handsome goofball would really be friendless or have much difficulty with the opposite sex. This kind of “loser” has become a generic type seen too often in movies these days. Give us a real loser, or give us something else.

One problem with Novocaine as an action-comedy is that apart from the physical humour of Nathan being hurt a lot, none of the jokes really land. And there are a lot of them, with scenes slowed down or interrupted for unnecessary comedy beats. Buddy cop scenes between two detectives (Betty Gabriel and Matt Walsh) in particular add very little to the movie, which at 110 minutes is quite a bit too long. By the end, the immortal words of Sideshow Bob rang true: “Even that car chase felt tacked on!”

Novocaine might have worked better if it was a bit nastier in tone, since the high levels of violence don’t really sit well with the basic mawkishness of the plot and the innocuous tone of the humour. The whole film feels way too dopey and mild, considering it contains multiple scenes of torture, without any cutaways for decorum. Another outing for the gormless schmuck.

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Novocaine is currently playing in cinemas.