everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Dr. Frank Sangster (Steve Martin) is a straight-laced dentist engaged to his assistant Jean Noble (Laura Dern). Pat (Lynne Thigpen) is the office manager. Then sexy patient Susan Ivey (Helena Bonham Carter) comes looking for prescription drugs. He prescribes 5 pills but she scrams 50 out of the pharmacist. He constantly tries to bail out his slacker brother Harlan (Elias Koteas). Then Susan comes back pulling him into a web of danger and her handsy criminal brother Duane (Scott Caan).This one didn't make me laugh once. It could have been an interesting crime noir but this needs to strip away the attempts at comedy. It also needs to be darker and more intense. Director David Atkins's amateur skills aren't good enough. Also Frank's lies don't make much sense either and his narration that he wants to see Susan again doesn't really solve it. It's just constructed poorly.

Steve Martin is believable as a dentist who sees his life spiraling out of control after a series of cascading lies sets him up as a murder suspect. What is not believable is the script, which seems to overlook common sense. Cops that fall asleep while guarding a suspect, and worse yet handcuffing a suspect to a flimsy bench in the court house. After an intriguing set up, everything has less and less logic. The proverbial happy ending is totally unbelievable, as is the supposed motivation for the entire storyline. If you want to see a pretty good Steve Martin performance and can overlook Novocaine's many flaws, it is definitely watchable. - MERK

Steve Martin plays Frank Sangster, a boring dentist whose life begins to unravel after he prescribes some drugs to Susan (the stunning Helena Carter), who outright seduces him later. Which leads him on an odesy of sex, drugs, and murder in this black comedy that sadly seems to skimp on the comedy aspect. Laura Dern seems miscast as Franks put-upon fiancé. One bright spot is Kevin Bacon. This movie isn't bad, it's not good either. It's just... there.My Grade: C DVD Extras: Director's Commentary; 'Bitten' (a 9-minute featurette about dentistry); Getting the Shot (a making of featurette); 5 deleted scenes; 6 excerpts from the musical score; Production Notes; Cast and Crew bios; 2 Theatrical Trailers; and Trailers for "Dr. T and the Women"; the Rambo Trilogy; "Good Advice", "Van Wilder", and the first season of "Twin Peaks" Easter Egg: one more deleted scene; out takes of said scene; and a Storyboard to screen comparison can be found be highlighting a stuffed toy in various places Eye Candy: Helena is fleetingly topless

This has been a quite entertaining movie. Not really a top notch movie, not really working as a comedy, but still pretty entertaining. It started out veeery slow and boooring - it took a little too long for it to evolve. But when it started to it got better and better. There's that very freaky story and a wrecked Bonham-Carter (she's good playin such characters ;-) adding most to this film. However the ending was a little too fantastic since it shouldn't be a problem for the forensics to ... no, I won't spoil hehe.My favourite scene was Martin's call where he spoke to that guy who answered the phone with "barbie's bakery. it's mr. muffin man speakin." LOLMy overall rating is: 6.5/10 - if you're not sure what to watch, try this one. It works pretty well as entertainment.