Over the last few years, the high-concept genre mashups that were all the rage in the early 1990s have made a mostly quiet comeback. “Mostly” because writer-director BenDavid Grabinski’s Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is easily the shaggiest and most raucous of the recent lot. It’s a crime comedy that cracks wise at the expense of suspense and intrigue, and it’s a testament to its delirious, loopy energy that this approach largely works.
It helps that the assembled cast delivers the screenplay’s jokes with peerless commitment, with Vince Vaughn pulling double duty on the front lines as two versions of a gangster, Nick, whose future self sends his best friend, Mike (James Marsden), on one last job—to kidnap present-day Nick—before he retires. As it turns out, a tech bro named Symon (Ben Schwartz) has cracked time travel, and Nick has come back from a tragedy six months into the future on a mission that throws a monkey wrench into not just his life, but the entire criminal underworld.
Grabinski’s script doesn’t make much room for an explanation of time travel, nor does it get into the particulars of the criminal hierarchy, but it’s got nothing but time (pun unintended) for ridiculous, freewheeling jokes and heartfelt musings on regrets and actively investing in one’s relationships. That makes for a comedy that feels dizzying when it’s got to move the plot forward but gently endearing, even a little bittersweet and melancholy, when it matters most.
Unexpectedly, given his usual, uneasy screen presence, Vaughn is Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’s beating heart, and the actor is moving across scenes where Nick comes to grips with his mistakes and how they’ve poisoned his relationships, especially his marriage to Alice (Eiza González). Less surprising, perhaps, is that Marsden continues to show that he’s a down-for-anything comedic performer, and he’s utilized perfectly, holding his own among actors, like Jimmy Tatro as a crime lord’s son, who effortlessly turn the crazy dial up to 11.
Grabinski doesn’t throw the crime elements completely under the bus for Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’s emotional moments, dotting the film with a few surprisingly hard-hitting fisticuffs and gun play. And those are spiced up even further by a killer soundtrack full of mid-’90s techno classics mixed with delightfully baffling Lite FM deep cuts (the film starts with, of all songs, “Why Should I Worry” from Oliver & Company). But the film is less of a crime drama than a punch-drunk comedy of errors. It cares a ton about its characters but isn’t above using bullets to settle arguments. There’s a trashy little high-concept caper at the heart of Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, and the only reason it works is because it wears its heart on its bloodstained sleeve.
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