Mash ups can be incredibly fun, but they can also be incredibly messy – but nothing is stopping them from being fun and messy. Take Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, the new film that’s landed on Hulu for example; it’s a gangster movie that’s chosen to style itself on the sort of glib, punchy, comedy actioners that populates the filmography of someone like Shane Black – but with a twist. You see, while bullets fly and zingers zing, the makers of the film whose title is far too annoying to type frequently has decided to drop a little wild card into its already frothing DNA. What if it was all those things that I’ve already mentioned – but it was a fucking TIME TRAVEL MOVIE TOO!?!?
It’s usually at this point during the pitch that the coked-out film producer takes another blast of China white and forges ahead with his sales techniques; but while Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice certainly sounds like the synopsis of a film born of way too many barbiturates, it ends up bring a slice of happy – if scrappy – fun.
As the members of a criminal fraternity gathers together to celebrate the release of Jimmy Boy, the son of mob boss, Sosa, there seems to be something strange going on between some of their number. For a start, regretful gangster Quick Draw Mike is not only planning to get out from the life, but he’s been having an affair with Alice, the wife of his best friend Nick. In their defence, they are both very much in love after Alice’s marriage has become a lifeless slog filled with resentment and cheating, but they both know that if Nick found out he’d kill them nonetheless.
You can then imagine how panicked Mike gets when he’s waiting for Alice to meet him at a hotel room and he’s greeted by Nick instead who requests that his friend accompanies him on some sort of mystery job. Convinced that his buddy is taking him out to execute him, Mike is simultaneously stunned to discover that Nick really does need him for a super strange job that requires they kidnap someone from Nick’s house, but when Mike springs the trap, he’s flummoxed by the fact that the person Nick and he is supposed to grab is… Nick? It’s here where things start to get strange and to get the answers, we’re going to have to go forward in time by six months to the laboratory of Symon, an inventor who took a loan out with Nick in order to fund his greatest invention – a motherfucking time machine.
Regretful of a lot of the things that occurred the night of Jimmy Boy’s party, Nick zaos himself back in order to play Marty McFly with his friends and try to avoid some truly nasty deaths occurring. You see, in his spiteful anger, Present Nick lied to Sosa and told him Mike was the rat who got his son put away for nine tears and as a result, the canninalistic hitman known as “The Barron” has been hired to take him out. Can Mike, Alice and Future Nick mamage to persuade Present Nick to change his vengeful ways and defend the man who is sleeping with his wife? Doc Brown didn’t have to put up this this shit.
As we’re plainly in mash-up territory, I don’t anyone would mind if I use the laziest (but quickest and easiest) form of describing a weird film and just throw two film titles together in order to give you an idea what to expect. In fact, I think smooshing together Back To The Future with Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead make a nicely accurate description of what to expect of BenDavid Grabinski’s madcap offering, although the time travel stuff itself tends to skew more into Hot Tub Time Machine territory rather than something like Looper. The main joke here is that for a lot of the film, James Marsden’s Mike and Eiza González’s Alice have to deal with not one, but two versions of the latter’s husband – both played by Vince Vaughan.
As you’ve probably guessed from both the strange title and the rather crazed plot description, we’ve got ourselves yet another zippy action comedy with an over abundance of personality and buckets of charm and I have to admit, considering the slasher genre has been playing fast and loose with mashing up movie concepts for a while with Happy Death Day, Freaky and It’s A Wonderful Knife, I’m surprised that action comedies have taken so long to catch up. As a result, the air is not only thick with glib one liners that leans heavily into mining time travel humour for all it’s worth (“The only person who can fuck this up is me.”) while delivering crazed action sequences that sit somewhere between John Woo and Chad Stahelski (but on a smaller scale). However, bolstering material that admittedly could crash and burn any minute is a cast who are more than game to try and make this cordite stained, sci-fi farce work.
Taking point is Vaughn, who is used to this screwball brand of plotting thanks to his turn as a teenage girl trapped in the body of a hulking serial killer in Freaky. In fact, watching him engage in his brand of rapid fire, sarcastic back and forth concerning such subjects as sugar-free candy, the finer points of chloroform and even an in-depth plunge into The Gilmore Girls opposite such people as a disgruntled wife, a stoned cashier and himself proves to be a major source of fun. Elsewhere we find Masden engaged in his usual charm offensive and while it’s a bit of stretch to believe him as a prolific mob shooter, he has great chemistry with González, who seems to be making quite a name for herself in these wackier sort of thrillers. Aiding and abetting them is a slew of character actors including Jimmy Tatro, Keith David, Emily Hampshire, Lewis Tan and Ben Schwartz who all robustly play a selection of terrifying mob bosses, obnoxious inventors and idiotic criminals to continue the film’s party atmosphere.
Director BenDavid Grabinski keeps the mayhem moving at a steady clip and peppers the cast with as many jokes as bullets as he nails a playful attitude, but he even manages to attempt and mostly pull off a bitter sweet ending that manages to inject a bit of heart into the craziness.
However, like most films like this, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice ends up being a bit of a mess concerning that it’s trying to juggle comedic wordplay, brain blasting gunfights and cramming fouth person into the central love triangle. However, for all it’s faults, the movie is consistently fun and, for better or for worse, goes out of its way to keep you off balance even if it doesn’t make a whole load of sense.
Still, as time travel, gangster comedy/action movies go, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice proves to be a pretty likable affair that keeps the laughs and twists coming and you can rest assured that you’re not going to see anything similar anytime soon. It’s just a shame we can’t go back in time to try and get some sort of big screen release and not have forgotten as some flavour of the week streaming release.
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