The trouble with reviving an old genre like noir is that filmmakers are often paralyzed by their own self-consciousness, too aware of the conventions to recycle them in earnest and yet unable to stop themselves from going through the motions. It's rare when a film like Joel and Ethan Coen's brilliant The Man Who Wasn't There can get past the tired attitudes and arbitrary twists, and rediscover the core feelings of despair and alienation that give rise to the genre in the first place. Most of the time, modern noir steers closer to the likes of Novocaine, a boilerplate crime comedy that nearly winks itself into an apoplectic fit. Even the winking is at cross-purposes: On the one hand, first-time director David Atkins plays straight to a knowing audience that's seen it all, and, on the other, he asks it to swallow the same old creaky turns like they've never been tried before. In a casting nod to his memorable cameo in Little Shop Of Horrors, Steve Martin stars as a pain-free dentist whose well-ordered life is upended by Helena Bonham Carter, a femme fatale who preys on his weakness and gullibility. In cahoots with her thuggish brother (Scott Caan), Bonham Carter seduces Martin out of his narcotics supply and deals it to local teenagers, correctly assuming that he'll keep quiet rather than risk losing his license and his hygienist fiancée, played by Laura Dern. But the scheme unravels quickly when Caan turns up bludgeoned on Martin's doorstep and he's falsely fingered for the crime, forcing him to flee from the police and reassess his loyalties. Atkins' one idea for setting Novocaine around a dentist's office is to liken corruption to tooth decay, with small lies inching into bigger lies like a cavity that spreads until the entire set is rotten. But the metaphor gets lost in a crass and predictable whodunit that relies on Martin to be savvy or a sucker at the plot's convenience. Atkins has some success with self-referential humor, thanks mostly to a funny extended cameo by Kevin Bacon as a method actor who's tailing a real cop and inadvertently fires off some incriminating questions. It's also good to see Martin, so impressive as a slithery con man in The Spanish Prisoner, take a chance on darker material again after the middlebrow horror that was The Out-Of-Towners. But Novocaine betrays his faith with smug humor and grating cartoonishness, especially from Dern as a domineering priss with a taste for silhouette portraits, stuffed animals, and tae kwon do. It's impossible to believe that Martin would ever put up with her, but, taken along with the film's other implausibilities, that's only scratching the surface.