Novocaine

Interesting if flawed comedy thriller in which Steve Martin makes something of a return to form after years in the comedic wilderness. He plays a wealthy LA dentist, Frank Sangster, who is about to marry his oral hygienist Jean (Dern). However, after an encounter with an unhinged female patient (Bonham Carter in a neat riff on her Fight Club persona), he's accused of a crime he didn't commit and his whole life begins to unravel.

There are many good things about Novocaine - Martin's deft performance, an early rich stream of gags and a few well-placed thrills - but it's ultimately a fairly vacant exercise. It's obvious - due to the structure of the piece and the usage of a heavy voice over narration - that writerandfrasl;director Atkins has aspirations for Novocaine to be seen as a film noir or even a Raymond Chandler-esque black comedy. Honourable intentions on paper, but Atkins doesn't really seem to know how to apply it in practice and the result is a movie which starts out promisingly but fades into ignominy, due to the proliferation of unnecessary twists and turns.