Time travel films can be exhausting.
The logical threads are often tough to untangle, and the gimmick gives screenwriters too many cheat codes. It’s why 1985’s “Back to the Future” remains a marvelous slice of time travel perfection.
“Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” can’t come close to that standard. It’s the opposite, a frantic attempt at dark humor laced with endless action sequences.
A very game cast takes a smart approach to the material, but the further the story goes along, the less engaging it becomes. The film should make like a tree and get out of here.
Thuggish Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro) is celebrating his return from prison, and his crime boss pappy Sosa (Keith David) wants to know who framed him in the first place.
The trail leads to Mike (James Marsden), but his friend and associate Nick (Vince Vaughn) has a plan to save him from doom. Even though Nick set this dangerous game in motion by naming Mike the rat.
Our Nick stumbles upon a time machine that allows him to go back in time to prevent Mike from getting whacked and erase his mistake. Or, at least that’s the idea. Endless complications erupt, from having two Nicks bumping into one another to Mike trying to keep his affair with Nick’s wife, Alice (Elsa González), a secret.
Confused? You should be, but writer/director BenDavid Grabinski keeps things cohesive enough to follow what’s happening from scene to scene.
It’s just not worth the effort.
Let’s put aside the ugly morality behind the film. These are all criminal characters made to seem warm and fuzzy, another ethical loophole in Hollywood’s woke agenda.
(You can’t make DudeBro comedies about entitled white frat boys, but you can humanize contract killers).
Grabinski’s script is littered with pop culture references, and it takes a deft hand to weave them seamlessly into a story like this. That hand, alas, is missing.
It’s fine that the script gives quirks to key characters, minor notes that often bespeak a film’s depth. That said, each idiosyncratic tic shouts its existence.
The film’s endless needle drops can’t save the story, either, and they, too, announce themselves in crude fashion. Look, Ma, this ’90s ditty is gonna make everything in “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” better. Trust us!
Not even close.
“Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” features a few fun cameos by old pros, but their presence can’t fix the story’s sizable flaws. That goes double for the Mike-Alice love connection. That should steer the story in an even darker, more impactful direction. Instead, it’s treated with a shrug.
Sorry, mobsters aren’t this evolved in their emotional lives.
What’s left? A story that’s cobbled together from generic blockbusters and Tarantino tics without the heart or humor to make them pop. If the film’s sequel tease holds, we’ll build a time machine to stop this misfire from happening in the first place.
HiT or Miss: “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” gives a game cast little to do save chase each other through some allegedly wacky paces.
The film debuts March 27 on Hulu/Hulu on Disney+
