Dumb and number

>> The dentist thriller Novocaine lacks chops

by JOANNE LATIMER

Novocaine struggles to feel like an Elmore Leonard adaptation. If only the snappy crime writer were behind this project, there would've been some hope for the script, which tested my tolerance for predictable thrillers and set my teeth on edge with pre-fab lines like, "I'm just a dentist!"

Thankfully, it's Steve Martin playing a dentist stuck in a humdrum life. Martin is brilliant when parodying the routine of the dentist, with his bossy assistants, his tricks to relax patients, his nice cars and his beautiful hygienist (Laura Dern). The dentist's perfectly managed life comes apart when Helena Bonham Carter arrives for a root canal. Her true intent is getting a 500-pill prescription for painkillers. Bonham Carter reprises her mangy look from Fight Club and that, improbably, turns Martin into a fool for her red panties.

Also on the scene is the dentist's no-good brother, played by ex-Montrealer Elias Koteas, (Crash, Exotica, Apt Pupil). The brother plays on Martin's guilt, and dips into the at-home drug supply for recreation. Koteas is good and twitchy, as he should be. When we first meet the brother, he's passed out on the floor with red paint smearing on his clothes and the walls. It looks like blood for a few minutes, until we learn he has fallen asleep while trying to paint the bathroom on ludes. That's the kind of plot trick that ends up just plain annoying. It's a ham-fisted way to introduce the concept of violence into the film--maddening foreshadowing for remedial film audiences.

The cops come on the scene when all of Martin's drugs go missing from the office. Bonham Carter's brother, an addict, appears and director David Atkins' cannot resist playing the incest card. It was entirely unnecessary, since we already understood their dysfunctional family's special needs. The good doctor becomes the prime suspect in a murder and Novocaine gets downright silly from there on. Silly is such an unfortunate word when describing crime thrillers. All the fancy wipes between scenes and the stylish X-ray shots cannot make this film the dentists' Trainspotting.

Director Atkins reached mild cult fame with Arizona Dream, which he wrote at Columbia film school and Emir Kusturica directed. Novocaine is Atkins' first follow-up feature but he can do better. Despite the plot's devotion to drug addicts and violence, this is a maddeningly tidy and sterile whodunnit. :

Novocaine opens Friday, Nov. 16