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Review

In Little Shop of Horrors, Steve Martin demonstrated a comic brilliance in his cameo as a sadistic dentist. Unfortunately, none of that comic inspiration can be found in Novocaine, a tired black comedy with Martin once again playing a dentist. Here he's Frank Sangster, a successful doc who's engaged to his attractive nurse (Dern). He then gets caught in a scam perpetrated by an alluring new patient (Bonham Carter, still in Fight Club mode). Instead of putting a stop to it all, he goes with it until he almost loses everything. Novocaine wants to be an edgy comic thriller, but as written by director Atkins, the jokes aren't funny or dark enough, and the plot never gives way to anything even remotely thrilling. Martin's perseverance in making Frank a likable Hitchcock-like Everyman/Wrong Man gives the film what very little appeal it has.