They don’t make them like they used to. That’s a sentiment tossed around more and more frequently in an era of ever-increasing change. In some respects, you wouldn’t be unwarranted in thinking that I was going to call Novocaine a form of old-school, mainstream entertainment—the kind of thing that could be, somewhat derisively, referred to as a “dad movie.” 

But I’m going to be doing the opposite. Novocaine is emblematic of Hollywood’s inability to make them like they used to. This has all the ingredients of a mid-budget, Big Five action thriller of the 2000s. Narratively, it’s covering a lot of the same ground and offering many of the same thrills as last year’s The Beekeeper—a film which came quite close to making ‘em like they used to. But it doesn’t even come close for one reason: irony. Hollywood just can’t help themselves. They can’t summon the teensiest amount of sincerity.

It feels strange to be commending the trashy action thrillers films of the 1990s/2000s for being earnest, but after seeing Novocaine, that’s where I feel like we’re at in film culture in 2025. Jack Quaid is playing the same character as he has in The Boys—a project that’s as guilty as any for normalizing this trend—as is his sidekick, Jacob Batalon. It’s all a big laugh to these guys. In the past, we, the audience, expected the heroes of these films to live through the plot because we know the contrivances of the genre. But it’s now to the point where the characters themselves know this as well.

Back in around 2012, the main thing I lamented about superhero films was that the fact that the heroes were invulnerable made you worry less about their fate. In the interim years, this phenomenon spread from the superhero to their powerless sidekick. It’s no wonder they brought in Batalon, who like Quaid is playing the same character with a new name. 

This is all like the old rule in comedy: the joke can’t be funny to the character. They must be sincere. There’s a reason sitcoms had the studio audience laugh instead of the characters. 

If you compare this to its competitor, Mickey 17, both are littered with irony and both are doing a broad version of satire. Neither have all that much clarity in what exactly it is they’re cutting up, but Mickey 17’s characters, for their part, play it straight. Novocaine could have really benefited from doing the same. 

To be clear, the film isn’t just a tonal reshuffle of unabashed trash films of the 2000s. It’s clearly drawing inspiration from the more recent works of 87North Productions. But Novocaine isn’t precise enough in its choreography to fully execute that. To an extent, this is actually a positive, as there’s a certain sterile quality that 87North films have that make them ill-fitting for action comedy. By comparison, Novocaine is allowed to be pulpier and juicier, and is all the better for it. 

Aside from what I’ve listed thus far, there are two specifics that are holding this film back:

1) The Girlfriend Arc

2) The Villain

First, there’s the twist—that I didn’t see coming—that recontextualizes their relationship. Not only has the spy-falling-for-the-mark story been trite every time it’s been executed, but in this situation it just doesn’t even play whatsoever. Given what had transpired, the only way to write themselves out of that hole is to turn the girl into a full-blown baddie or to at least alter her relationship with the villain so they don’t have to prove that blood isn’t thicker than water, after all.

Speaking of—yes—change the villain. Within this setup, a good villain is a major opportunity to up the entertainment value of the picture and they just give us JC Penny Tony Montana. 

Novocaine is fine. It got some laughs from me—particularly the ‘torture’ scene—but it hardly makes full use of it’s premise to deliver twisted, wicked fun.