Vince Vaughn And James Marsden’s Messy Genre Mashup Relies On Tired Jokes

At some point in the last couple of decades, the predominant style of studio comedies drifted from whimsy and physical feats to ironic detachment. We’ve had some films buck that trend in recent years (last year’s The Naked Gun was a refreshing return to form), but we seem to be inundated with material that has to invent silliness out of naturalism. This trend feels particularly prevalent in writer-director BenDavid Grabinski’s Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, a tonally askew, time travel-based buddy comedy that constantly eschews believability for rough-hewn, who’s-on-first type dialogue of an increasingly obnoxious tenor.

Case in point: An early conversation between involves Nick (Vince Vaughn) telling Mike (James Marsden) to use chloroform. Mike has never heard the word before. He’s a high-level gangster whose nickname is “quick draw” for the efficiency with which he kills people, but he’s never of chloroform. Nick asks him if he’s ever seen a movie, which kicks off an absurd back and forth whereby Mike finally realizes that what he has called “the wet rag thing” is, in fact, the application of chloroform.

If that’s not all that strange to you, how about that crime boss Sosa (Keith David), who is in his upper 60s, has never heard of Winnie the Pooh? Or that his son, Jimmy (Jimmy Tatro), doesn’t know the word “comeuppance”? It seems clear from these moments and others that Grabinski is merely using these cutesy divergences as kick-off points for sarcastic repartee. About the only time this type of humor works is when the entire group of main characters get side-tracked in a conversation about Gilmore Girls, but even then, it seems incredulous. After all, they’re in the middle of discussing how they’re going to keep from getting killed.

Odd Stylistic Choices & A Frustrating Lack Of Propulsion Doom This Action-Comedy

Grabinski’s film suffers from wearing too many hats. A genre mashup that combines sci-fi, mobster crime, and Groundhog Day-like kookiness, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is best when it’s playing with form. But Grabinski almost seems self-conscious about his own stylistic choices, working overtime to spell out just how confusing his premise is. So much of the film’s comedy is non-propulsive, which is a problem if you are also trying to build an action film with genuine stakes. Each time the film starts to get moving, it has to pause to emphasize just how weird this all is.

Truth to be told, it’s not too weird. Mike and Nick are hired guns for a criminal organization that is celebrating Jimmy’s return after six years in prison. He had taken the fall instead of talking, but they’re still searching for the rat they know is somewhere in their ranks. Mike and Alice (Eiza González) are having an affair. Alice is married to Nick, but has wanted to get out of the marriage for a long time; she knows he’s been having multiple affairs himself.

After Jimmy’s celebration, Mike heads to a hotel room to meet Alice, but instead is greeted by Nick, who insists he comes with him on one last job. But it’s a weird job: Nick needs Mike to knock out Nick. Other Nick – present day Nick. This Nick is from just six months in the future, when Mike is dead, because Nick erroneously spread that Mike was the organization’s rat. Future Nick has come back in time to prevent current Nick from making the same mistake.

Meanwhile, Jimmy, Sosa, and the rest of the gang, including Dumbass Tony (Arturo Castro, and yes, that is the character’s name), are hopping from the party to the afterparty to the after-afterparty to the after-after-afterparty, which have increasingly debauched levels of celebration. There’s a lot of silly bro humor that was fashionable in the early 2000s but now feels stale, and Grabinski hangs on to a number of jarring stylistic choices, like sudden frame rate changes and excessive needle-dropping, to tell the tale.

Very little works in Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, in spite of several strong performances. Tatro is a real standout as a bombastic idiot, and Ben Schwartz provides life as Symon, the inventor of the time travel machine. But the characterizations are so thin, and the plot points so broad, that it can feel maddening being thrown between kinetic action and overly written conversations, with sci-fi elements that raise a plethora of unanswered questions. Unfortunately, Grabinski cannot go back in time to fix it.

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice screened at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival.