Co-directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen’s action comedy movie Novocaine debuts in U.S. theaters this Friday, March 14, 2025. Initial reviews from professional critics are coming in, and they are mostly positive. This has led to solid scores for the movie on two major review aggregating sites: Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. Notably, Novocaine tells the story of Jack Quaid’s Nathan Caine, a seemingly ordinary bank executive who can’t feel any pain. He must rise to the occasion and rescue the girl he is interested in after a group of bank robbers takes her hostage.
Novocaine reviews praise Jack Quaid’s action movie
ComingSoon’s Jonathan Sim hails Novocaine as a “viciously entertaining” movie that offers “non-stop fun that moves at a phenomenal pace.” Sim adds, “It’s a brilliant concept that’s executed to its maximum potential.”
William Bibbiani of TheWrap writes that Jack Quaid was born to play characters like Nathan Caine. “The actor’s unassuming cheerfulness provides the perfect comedic counterpoint to the film’s increasingly absurd gross-out action gags,” Bibbiani explains.
According to Brian Orndorf of Blu-ray.com, Novocaine “limps” towards its conclusion, but he mentions that the movie’s “early energy is enjoyable” and that it has a “few portions of chaos” that get the audience invested in the narrative.
ScreenCrush’s Matt Singer praises Novocaine by comparing it to Evil Dead II (1987) and Crank (2006), and notes that like those movies, Novocaine asks the audience “to derive twisted pleasure from watching a heroic leading man get the crap beaten out of him in inventive ways.”
Not all the reviews that Novocaine has garnered are positive. For instance, the San Francisco Chronicle’s G. Allen Johnson observes that Novocaine “isn’t exactly painless to sit through,” referring to the movie’s title as well as its plot.
Novocaine has accumulated an 88% approval rating on the review-aggregating site Rotten Tomatoes after 34 reviews. Meanwhile, on Metacritic, which utilizes a weighted average to rate a movie, Novocaine has a score of 67 out of 100 after 12 reviews, denoting a “Generally Favorable” response. These numbers will likely change after the movie premieres and more reviews are published, but the overall critical consensus will probably remain similar.
