Three movies that were released last weekend — Novocaine, Opus, and Borderline — rely on considerable violence and killings to advance their storylines. Despite the presence of comedic elements in each of the films, the carnage is crucial. Also premiering in the multiplex at the same time, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie is the first full-length fully animated feature from Warner Bros. to focus on any of the studio’s cartoon stalwarts. In this case, it’s the earnest, hapless Porky Pig and the manic, oblivious Daffy Duck in a wacky alien-invasion adventure loaded with the kind of body-bashing slapstick that only an ink-and-paint or computer-generated character could survive.
Denizens of Toontown can get away with physical mayhem, while the realistic depictions of splattering human viscera engineered by the effects people for Novocaine, Opus, and Borderline are not as easy to shrug off as a mallet squashing an anthropomorphic animal. The hero of the breakneck crime thriller/romance Novocaine is a bank employee (Jack Quaid) who literally feels no pain, even as he’s repeatedly shot and stabbed by a trio of robbers. Its projectile-and-weapon-assisted fight sequences are played for laughs, but they might repel or at least sting sensitive viewers.
The satirical, thematically tangled Opus visits the remote, commune-like compound of a reclusive, imperious rock star (John Malkovich) where he and his blithering devotees throw a party to introduce his first album in years to a handful of invited guests, including a rising pop-music journalist (Ayo Edebiri). It’s just the sort of situation that would allow long-simmering scores to be settled in shocking ways. Although an avoidance of spoilers prevents any further elaboration, it’s fair to say that bad things happen.
A worrisome real-world context
As for Borderline, its 1990s-set plot is driven by the unrequited love that a cheerfully deranged fan (Ray Nicholson) feels for a vacuous, pop singer-turned-actor (Samara Weaving), which leads to a home invasion by the fan and a couple fellow psychos — and bedlam. The commitment of the actors and the unhinged nature of the script by director Jimmy Warden (writer of the equally outrageous Cocaine Bear) manage to bring something fresh to the deadly obsession trope.
Flaws notwithstanding, each of these live-action projects has some measure of merit and allows a bunch of talented performers to do laudable work. But the dominance of such brutality on the release schedule suggests a certain numbing that’s resulted from the accelerated, unexpurgated media stream coming at us; or the increasing ugliness, solipsism, and lack of empathy in modern society; or the general erosion of civility; or all of the above. As worrisome as the reasons are, they are reflected in the movies, especially Novocaine.
Going many hobbled steps beyond the chaos of Opus or Borderline, Novocaine is a constant barrage of explicitly detailed violence that would be shrugged off if it occurred in a cartoon. It’s more than gratuitous; it’s purposeful. Novocaine does have the advantage of the immensely likeable Jack Quaid (Companion, The Boys) in the lead role of Nate Caine — a shy, nondescript bank employee who suffers from a rare, but apparently real affliction. He can’t feel pain, which keeps him from engaging with others for safety’s sake. When the bank teller he longs to date is kidnapped during a robbery by a trio of masked miscreants, he transcends his milquetoast nature and leaps into action — wounds, bruises and broken bones be damned. Sherry the teller is played with verve by Amber Midthunder (Predator: Prey), who also portrays one of the rock star’s acolytes in Opus. In addition to costarring in Borderline, Ray Nicholson brings genuine menace to Novocaine as the vicious leader of the bank thieves.
The flesh or the fantasy
There are a few twists in Novocaine that might surprise audiences. Ultimately, the enterprise stands or falls on the appeal of Quaid as the good-hearted, naïve Nate, doggedly chasing down the criminals to save Sherry. It’s hard to not root for him as he’s battered around like a human piñata by the bad guys and pursued by a pair of cops (Matt Walsh, Betty Gabriel) under the impression that Nate is in league with the robbers. Depending on your temperament, you might laugh as blow after blow is visited upon poor Nate. You might cringe, too, because he’s a flesh-and-blood man getting torn apart, not a cartoon character. Nor is he one of the Three Stooges who pounded each other, poked one another in the eyes, and were tossed through walls in their old black-and-white two-reel comedies and always emerged with nary a scratch. Nate’s bloody fate is far more graphic and unsettling.
For all of the stretching, squeezing and beating that Porky and Daffy endure in The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, it seems quite mild by comparison to Novocaine. Perhaps that’s because they’re a pig and a duck — and they’re animated. Of course, prigs and scolds have long blamed cartoons for damaging or perverting the values and sensibilities of the young, pointing to the offhand violence that has always been a significant source of knock-about comedy in animation. It’s a given that kids love cartoons, so it’s somewhat understandable that adults might be concerned by their impact on impressionable minds. In particular, vintage Warner Bros. shorts have relied on characters (usually antagonists or out-and-out villains) being victimized by slings, arrows, falling safes, and explosions, then invariably restored to their original condition in a matter of seconds.
Countless little ones laughed at these shenanigans over the decades, and most of them probably knew that what they were watching was not real nor to be emulated. Now, similar antics are on display in The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie when an extraterrestrial force destroys the farmhouse where Porky and Daffy live, and they need to fight hordes of neighbors who have turned into zombies due to a transmuting goop that an interstellar invader has mixed into an addictive brand of chewing gum. All of that is largely an excuse to put Porky and Daffy into dangerous circumstances that result in funny business. And their resilience is expected. They exist in a cartoon, whereas Nate Caine lives in a heightened approximation of our cold, cruel world — which may explain why anyone might be more troubled than amused by Novocaine and its cinematic ilk.
