written by: BenDavid Grabinski
produced by: Andrew Lazar
directed by: BenDavid Grabinski
rated: R (for strong/bloody violence, pervasive language, sexual material, and drug use)
runtime: 107 min.
U.S. release date: March 27, 2026 (Hulu) 

I can’t recall the last time I watched a movie and became so disinterested so quickly, but that’s what happened with “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice”. This action-crime comedy, which dabbles in time travel, from writer/director BenDavid Grabinski, aims to be exciting and humorous but falls flat at every turn. The movie is being compared to mid-1990s Tarantino imitators, but that doesn’t quite fit here. A comedy involving time travel should be funny, twisty, and maybe even complicated, but this one feels determined to convince us it’s something it’s not. The only reason I stuck around was to see if and how “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” could redeem itself. It never did.

The movie has a curious cold open, in which Ben Schwartz plays a kind of science geek who’s invented a way to travel through time. In the first of many nostalgic needle drops, we see the character sing along to an obscure Billy Joel tune, “Why Should I Worry?”, from, of all things, the soundtrack to Disney’s 1988 animated feature “Oliver & Company” (a canine comedy musical adaptation of Charles Dickens classic, in which Joel voiced a Jack Russell Terrier named Dodger, aka Artful Dodger), and the guys knows every lyric, which is the kind of geekness that’s impressive. While we don’t see him again, he’s later referenced and described as a mad scientist named Symon. It’s kind of odd that it wasn’t clear from the start, but okay.

From there, the movie transitions to a coming-home party for Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro), the recently released adopted son of crime boss Sosa (Keith David), the first of many to be celebrated on this night. At the party, loan shark/hitman Nick (Vince Vaughn) arrives, looking to connect with Quick Draw Mike (James Marsden), a fellow criminal who is more interested in retiring from the business and focusing on Nick’s wife, Alice (Eiza Gonzalez), who’s waiting back in Mike’s hotel room, unbeknownst to Nick.

Nick and Mike have a history working in Sosa’s organization and have a mutual respect for the kind of work each is known for. Despite Mike letting Nick know that he’s done, Nick persuades him to do him a favor, and the two drive to Nick’s home, where Nick asks Mike to simply take out whoever answers the front door. Mike is a little confused by the mystery of it all, but goes along with it. When Nick answers the door, Mike is understandably confused, but nevertheless immediately goes about trying to kill him.

It turns out the Nick who answered the door is Present Nick, and the one who drove the property is Future Nick (both played by Vaughn), with the goal of Future Nick capturing his younger self to address a developing situation involving Sosa. As Present Nick escapes, Mike learns he’s been framed as a police informant who ratted on Jimmy Boy (a character who will have an unfunny erectile dysfunction subplot), which landed him in jail. Now he’s got a price on his head, with Sosa hiring cannibal assassin, “The Barron” (a fun cameo from Dolph Lundgren) to track Mike down. That’s why Future Nick went back in time to the night Mike would be killed to prevent it, but that doesn’t go so well. Eventually, as the title indicates, we have two Nicks, one Mike, and one Alice, all invariably working together to go up against Sosa, and soon they encounter the likes of characters named Roid Rage Ryan (Lewis Tan) and Dumbass Tony (Arturo Castro), a crooked cop named Sam (Emily Hampshire) and a special effects artist named Chet (Stephen Root) posing as an assassin.

Early on, Grabinski lays out the tensions between the titular characters, and they eventually form a bizarre partnership. It’s interesting and curious to see what the writer/director does with essentially two Vince Vaughn roles, but what’s surprisingly a little off is the actors’ performances. Vaughn comes across kind of slack, like he’s fatigued or disinterested in the role, er, roles. Not so much coasting along, but rather lacking the committed “all-in” presence some of his other costars are showing. That said, Marsden and David deliver the most memorable and entertaining performances, both taking their characters’ silliness seriously. As for Gonzalez, she has consistently proven herself a notable presence in almost every movie she appears in, but her character here feels rather one-note.

Many of these observations can be traced to Grabinski’s screenplay, which seems to tackle too much without offering enough to warrant investment. His writing style emphasizes goofiness and is weighed down by distracting pop culture references that mask a disjointed, convoluted narrative. There’s an “Alf” joke and a “Ghost” reference in the first-act that I’m not sure anyone will catch, and then later on, during what seems like a pivotal scene, all the major characters converse over the greatness of “Gilmore Girls”. You can get away with that kind of thing a couple of times in a movie, but Grabinski took a Jackson Pollock approach to all the references throughout his movie. It almost feels like these moments should be accompanied by laugh tracks.

One thing Grabinski wastes no time on from the outset of “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” is the needle drops, which seem like a mandated requirement that a song be included within 5-10 minutes of composer Joseph Trapanese’s score. I usually don’t concern myself with film budgets, but in this case, it feels as if most of the $80 million was spent on securing music rights. Which songs are used, and when, plays like an erratic mixtape rather than any discernible alignment with the on-screen action. For example, within a matter of 10 minutes, we go from “Bella Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus, to The Chemical Brothers’ “Block Rockin’ Beats,” and then to Papa Roach’s “Last Resort,” which makes one want to snatch the iPod shuffle from Grabinski. There’s also the use of “Ants Marching” by Dave Matthews Band and “Valerie” from Steve Winwood, not to mention Sheena Easton’s “Morning Train”, all during action sequences. No rhyme or reason, just shuffling on through the movie, much like the characters that inhabit it.

The use of Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town” should be banned for severe overuse in movies (alongside “Taking Care of Business” from Bachman–Turner Overdrive), but the one song used here that seems to align with the plot is “Don’t Look Back in Anger” from Oasis (a band that you surprisingly don’t see used in movies all that much), which is the only song used in an important moment, as the movie nears its conclusion.

For a movie that makes time travel central to its storyline, Grabinski makes no time for the science of it all. Every movie involving time travel has its own science fiction approach that is important to the understanding of the movie’s plot, even if it’s still kind of confusing (think “Back to the Future” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day”), but Grabinski only wants to use it to provide a reason for the two Nicks to stand alongside each other. At no point, though, do we find any parameters or restrictions on time travel that any of the characters have to contend with.

“Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” should be a wild ride with some fun or unexpected twists, or at least some snappy banter, but if any of that exists here, it’s drowned out by all the needle drops and reference-heavy dialogue. While I wasn’t bored with the movie, nor do I feel like I wasted my time, it was a confounded experience.

RATING: *1/2