Steve Carell's sendoff will get even more attention now.
Courtesy photo
Funny guy Will Ferrell is helping out his old bud Steve Carell by signing on to appear in four episodes of the NBC comedy The Office.
After all, what are friends for?
As reported in a Deadline New York exclusive, Ferrell called The Office producers and offered his services to help ease the show’s pain in losing its star. Carell is leaving after seven seasons, though the show will continue on without him in an eighth season
Ferrell will play a branch manager coming from the home office who is “just as inappropriate” as Carell’s character Michael Scott.
Imagine that.
Maybe Ferrell will stick around longer than those few episodes. Bringing him to the cast has the potential of creating rampant hysteria.
The two actors are close friends and starred together in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Take it from someone who once worked in local television — that farce had real moments of truth!
Paul Lieberstein, who leads a double life as the annoying HR executive Toby Flenderson as well as being the show’s executive producer, proclaimed, “We are proud to continue The Office’s tradition of discovering famous talent, and we hope that once America gets a good look at Will, they’ll see what we see, tremendous raw sexuality.”
No word yet on when exactly NBC will air the Ferrell/Carell episodes (it will be toward the end of this season).
Stories featuring ordinary people faced with extreme situations have proven to be popular in film history. They range from Hitchcock movies like Rear Window to Brian De Palma’s Blow Out to the Coen Brothers’ Fargo. Recent films like Nobody and Love Hurts have put a twist on the sub-genre, featuring protagonists whose mild personas and everyman looks hide violent abilities.
The new film Novocaine is a further twist, as the ordinary man at its center has an ability that he’s never fully tapped before. Nate Caine (Jack Quaid) is a mild-mannered assistant bank manager whose life is boring by design, as he has a disorder called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain. Being unable to feel pain, traumatic events that would stop most people in their tracks don’t faze him at all, sometimes to his detriment.
Soon after making a rare connection with another bank employee, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), the bank is robbed and Sherry is kidnapped. Nate decides to pursue the kidnappers to try to rescue Sherry, setting in motion a series of events that a person without his condition would find unbearable. However, his inability to feel pain turns him into a kind of unstoppable machine, determined to do whatever it takes to achieve his goal.
That synopsis of the film, directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen and written by Lars Jacobsen, makes it sound like a serious action film, but it’s actually an action comedy that finds a unique angle for its hero. The filmmakers portray Nate’s condition, if not completely accurately, then with an air of plausible realism. The laughs come not at his expense, but in reaction to how he repeatedly uses his ability to his advantage.
The result is a violently graphic film that rivals ones like John Wick in what it showcases. Knowing he can’t get hurt, Nate has no issue putting himself in harm’s way, whether it’s burns, gunshot wounds, impalements, and more. The amount of damage done to him could make the film into a kind of live-action Looney Tunes, but the filmmakers manage to walk the line between hilariously ridiculous and eye-rollingly stupid.
The romance between Nate and Sherry provides a nice through-line for the story, with a few good twists and turns along the way. The lone big misstep of the film is Nate’s friendship with Roscoe (Jacob Batalon), one developed through online gaming that turns into real life by necessity. It takes a long time for them to get any scenes together, with their interactions ultimately feeling unnecessary.
Quaid seems to be hitting his stride as an actor, starring in The Boys on Prime Video and in the recent Companion. He does a great job of never overplaying this role, keeping Nate as a regular person despite what he’s able to do. Midthunder is hit-and-miss, as the story takes her character through a yo-yo arc. Betty Gabriel and Matt Walsh do serviceable work as detectives tracking Nate, delivering exactly what’s expected of them.
Novocaine is much better than it probably had a right to be, with some solid storytelling, some intense action, and a fantastic lead performance by Quaid. Humor and graphic violence don’t always go hand-in-hand, but this film finds a way to combine them in memorable ways.