Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice
In Disney and Hulu’s time-travelling gangster spoof we get two Vince Vaughns for the price of one.
Quantum lurch: Eiza González, James Marsden, Vince Vaughn and Vince Vaughn
Courtesy of Disney+.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
The title is a tribute to Paul Mazursky’s 1969 comedy-drama Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which will probably fly over the head of most cinemagoers. There are also a lot of gags referencing TV’s Gilmore Girls, because American gangsters just love that series. That’s a joke. In fact, the whole film is a joke, of the nudge, nudge, elbow-in-the-ribs variety, before the next guy’s head is blown off. You see, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a gangster spoof-cum-time-travelling-sci-fi-cum-action comedy. There’s something here for everybody – and that is its undoing. It’s like delving into a lucky dip and coming up with a trinket you’ve already got, although of a far inferior quality.
It’s hard to distil the shambles of this farce, other than to say there’s a bit of Swingers, a pinch of GoodFellas, a sniff of The Alto Knights, a fistful of Back to the Future and a lot of DC Comics’ The Flash (2023). Vince Vaughn played a schoolgirl in the smart and nasty Freaky, which was a stretch, and here he gets to play a gangster called Nick and a gangster called Nick. This is the sort of film in which much of the humour is derived from the characters’ ignorance (the Mob boss Sosa has never heard of Winnie the Pooh; his son doesn’t know the meaning of “comeuppance”), although Vince Vaughn, as ‘Future Nick’, knows all about Doctor Who and the Tardis. It’s a useful narrative shortcut. Symon, a friend of Nick’s wife Alice (Eiza González), has invented a time machine, which ‘Present Nick’ steps into after killing Symon. And so he’s off to the future, in the hope of saving the life of his colleague Mike (James Marsden), who happens to be having an affair with Alice. “I’m confused,” observes Mike, as well he might.
A lot of the humour and the plot of Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice relies on the viewer’s foreknowledge of the mash-up of genres that the film is parodying. Both Vince Vaughns play it commendably straight, Eiza González gives a performance as if she’s in a real film and James Marsden goofs off as if he’s just stepped off the Airplane! It’s terribly wearisome, with the slow-motion shoot-outs, interminable scenes of knockabout combat and the use of foul language as a comic reflex about as tired as a 3.00am re-run of Baywatch Nights. However, if you are you able to believe that two characters could chat about Pixar’s Ratatouille in the midst of a gunfight, then this one is for you.
Cast: Vince Vaughn, James Marsden, Eiza González, Vince Vaughn, Keith David, Jimmy Tatro, Emily Hampshire, Arturo Castro, Lewis Tan, Ben Schwartz, Stephen Root, Dolph Lundgren, Dylan Playfair.
Dir BenDavid Grabinski, Pro Andrew Lazar, Screenplay BenDavid Grabinski, Ph Larry Fong, Pro Des Isabelle Guay, Ed Tim Squyres, Music Joseph Trapanese, Costumes Stephanie Porter, Sound Dean Hurley.
20th Century Studios/Mad Chance Productions-Hulu/Disney+.
107 mins. USA. 2026. UK and US Release: 27 March 2026. Cert: R.
