Martin's dentist this time around, Frank Sangster, is no sadist; rather, he's a decent guy stuck in a rut, albeit a successful one. His thriving practice and his beautiful, meticulous fiancée Jean, who's sort of a high-strung Dental Assistant Barbie (Laura Dern, in a performance of perfect hysterical pitch, especially at the end), just don't fulfill him. Enter sexily (in theory) messed-up Susan (Helena Bonham Carter, doing an excellent American accent but otherwise unimpressive), who seduces him, cons him for a prescription of Demerol, steals his supply of narcotics, and inadvertently sics her murderous, incestuous brother (Scott Caan in yet another no-neck thug role) on him. Nevertheless, he finds her irresistible enough to risk losing his license, his fiancée, and his life.
I can't put my finger on why the movie just didn't grip me. Partly it was the lack of chemistry between Martin and Bonham Carter; for the film to work, you have to believe their fierce attraction, and I didn't. The movie also unsuccessfully intersperses the action with moving x-rays (including people eating and drinking, so you see the liquid making its way down the esophagus), which are kind of cool to watch, but aren't effective symbolism, so they end up being distracting. And, frankly, the plot is just not that interesting -- we're meant to believe that Martin gets swept up in an unfortunate sequence of events that inexorably land him in trouble (the traditional movie theme of an innocent who makes one mistake and pays disproportionately for it), but he has the chance to get out of it at so many turns that you wonder why he blindly follows the path that's guaranteed to make his life difficult.
One of the more successful aspects of the movie is its reference to classic cinema. Martin's deadpan voice-over is positively Chandlerian, and the double-crosses criss-crossing the film are classic noir material (though if you really want a modern tribute to film noir, go see The Man Who Wasn't There). Martin's character is obsessed with Mr. Hulot's Holiday, showing it to his patients to calm them before root canals and dreaming of living in the film (Novocaine even ends with fin). You could also enjoy yourself spotting more modern movie connections that probably weren't intentional: Bonham Carter looks much as she did in Fight Club, the vaguely threatening yet outwardly genial policewoman echoes Whoopi Goldberg in The Player, Kevin Bacon proves as much a thorn in Martin's side as he did in his cameo in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (Bacon has a funny, unbilled cameo. I am telling you this now so that you don't do what 75% of the audience with whom I saw the movie did when he appears, namely, turn to whoever is sitting next to you and say, "That's Kevin Bacon!").
The absurdist ending is the best part of the movie; if the entire film had sustained that kind of gleeful lunacy, it would have been a lot more fun. Granted, it gets uncomfortably gruesome and doesn't really make sense (with plentiful evidence available to clear himself, Martin instead takes a repulsively drastic course of action), but once the end sequence gets rolling, you get carried along with it. Still, it doesn't really make up for the numbness of the preceding hour or so. What this film needs is a little more nitrous oxide and a lot less novocaine.
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