When was the last time you saw a time travel movie and thought, “That’s new!”? Yeah, it’s been a while for me, as well. Which is why I’m extra excited about Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, the new gangster crime comedy that hit Hulu on Friday.
If you’re like me and feel the need to veg out in front of the TV to some ridiculous ultraviolence, I suggest you give this movie a shot. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does mash up a whole assortment of genre references into a fun, self-aware crime comedy that, at times, feels reminiscent of the movies that rode Quentin Tarantino‘s coattails roughly two to three decades ago.
I say that in the same breath as this: If John Wick were a comedy full of silly scenery-chewing performances, it would be Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice.
If you want to avoid further details about the movie, please click away now. There are major story spoilers below.
James Marsden, Eiza González and Vince Vaughn star in Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice.
Vince Vaughn, James Marsden and Eiza González star in the film, which was written and directed by Ben-David Grabinski. It follows a criminal enforcer named Mike (Marsden) who’s over the gangster lifestyle. Nick (Vaughn), his literal partner in crime, convinces him to do one final job — and his target is, well, Nick.
But present-day Nick, and not future Nick. I’ll explain more in a bit.
You see, Mike is the victim of circumstance, and these specific circumstances have marked him as the one responsible for putting Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro), the son of mob boss, Sosa (Keith David), in prison.
Sosa is such a vengeful baddie that when he tells Nick he hired a cannibal hitman named the Barron to take Mike out, the joy on his face is nearly infectious — or was, until I remembered that Mike is the guy we’re rooting for. Killing people and eating them is pretty much frowned upon.
Keith David stars in Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice.
Mike is operating on borrowed time. But, so is Nick. Because, as I mentioned above, this is a time-travel movie and Nick is from the future.
Now, I’m not going to get lost in the minutiae of explaining how time travel works in this movie — because Grabinski didn’t bother explaining it either. Honestly, that’s one of the narrative details I appreciated off the bat. A movie like this shouldn’t require the extra brain power needed to process all of that nonsense, anyway.
The point is, Nick stepped into a time machine and traveled back half a year to address some grave choices he made, and do his best to right those wrongs. And he must knock some sense into the present-day version of himself; something he enlists Mike to do with a rag and chloroform.
Oh, and one more thing: Mike is having an affair with Nick’s wife, Alice (González). Because what’s better than having a weird love triangle storyline introduced into this bonkers gangster survival tale? I can’t think of anything at the moment, so let’s move on.
I suppose you could consider Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice to be a sci-fi movie, just as Project Hail Mary is an alien movie. The time-travel trope here and the first-contact trope in the Ryan Gosling blockbuster both inform these stories without overshadowing them, making for some delicious frosting on each proverbial story cake, or something.
This gangster conflict is a familiar scenario, punched up into something new and exciting by that time-travel detail. Grabinski was also behind Netflix’s Scott Pilgrim series, which used time travel as a mechanism in its overarching story, showing the man knows a thing or two about flipping audience expectations with a little bit of genre script-flipping.
You could do all the string-pulling necessary to bring a movie like this to life and still falter if the talent on screen was subpar. Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice boasts a sturdy cast that negates those concerns and reintroduces Vince Vaughn’s comedy stylings to the movie world. And we get that two-fold, considering the fact that he’s acting with himself in many of these scenes.
Two Vince Vaughns are better than one.
I’m not saying he’s been missing — Vaughn has been doing his thing on Apple TV’s Bad Monkey and previously played opposite Larry David’s neurotic comedy brilliance in Curb Your Enthusiasm. But after his dark, violent streak in movies like Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Dragged Across Concrete, it’s nice to see him back in a peak sardonic form.
His bickering banter with Marsden is where the movie shines the most. It’s always nice seeing Marsden on screen, too. Here, his natural charisma is on full display, and he gets to flex his comedy muscles, to boot. Then there’s González, whom I first discovered in Netflix’s 3 Body Problem. As Alice, she is formidable and holds her own opposite Vaughn, Marsden and, uh, Vaughn.
Ben Schwartz and Stephen Root come and go in memorable roles that help color in the edges of this already quirky story world. In all sincerity, the cast alone is a good reason to tune into this flick.
But also, if you’re anything like me and have missed movie comedies — because movie comedies aren’t really being made anymore — that take big swings, this one is for you. If you wax nostalgic for the ridiculous shoot-em-ups from the mid ’00s, like, say, the movie Shoot ‘Em Up, this one’s for you.
This isn’t Oscar material and wouldn’t draw me to the movie theater if it were released theatrically. That said, if, like me, you appreciate your Alf and Gilmore Girls references delivered alongside some epic needle drops from the late ’90s and early ’00s, well, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is most definitely for you.
