Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice

Mike and Nick are gangsters working for the same mob boss. Nick and Alice are married. Mike and Alice are having an affair. When Nick finds out, he plans to kill Mike, and maybe Alice too. The fortuitous invention of a time machine further complicates matters, as "Future Nick" shows up, and asks all three to help him undo the damage his past version had wrought that very night.

Titles like Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice are always a mistake. 

Let's just address this right away. The reason they're a mistake is mostly because the majority of your potential audience will never remember it, or keep it straight. It's unnecessary, it's bad for your movie, and it's really fucking annoying. In fact, the very first time the title-card came up on my Hulu, the very first time I saw it, just from the barest glimpse of the title alone, I was like “nope. Fuck you.” and I flipped past with no intention of ever returning.

But then I saw somewhere that there was a time travel element to the story. So I did a little more reading about the plot, and I was like... all right fine, even though Vince Vaughn is one of those big dumb douchebags who thinks that “woke” means comedy can’t be funny anymore, I’ll give it a chance.

Still, my entire initial reaction was based on old customer service ptsd, as a title like Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (I had to scroll up just now and double-check how it actually went, and then I had to scroll up again to recheck and make sure I got it right) means nothing but tedium for counter workers at movie theatres and video stores (if they still existed), simply because most people will never remember the title. Because of that, you will either be forced to guess what they're talking about when they come up to the counter and go "Do you that one movie with all the names?" And while, as far as I can recall, I appreciate a good Rashomon joke as much as the next guy, I spent so much time repeatedly saying shit like “it’s actually Me and You and Everyone We Know, so it’s under M in Drama, not Y,” or “it’s actually Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, so it's under W in Documentary, not P.” or some variation of “it's pronounced mnemonic." Which, sure, to be fair, is only mildly annoying, and mostly due to the sheer amount of times you finding yourself caught in the same situation and saying the same shit, and it's nowhere near as bad as when some asshole decides to do the obvious "Dad Joke" and rattle off a performatively long list of random names, as if they're the first person to think of this joke, and also, that it's actually funny, still... the blame lies with the creators. The whole situation is unnecessary. Titles like this aren't cute, they're certainly not memorable, nor do they roll off the tongue, so all you've really accomplishing here is to damage any potential casual word-of-mouth advertising that you might have otherwise received, if your movie turns out to be even somewhat entertaining, simply because no one can remember the dumb title of your dumb movie.

Sometimes you just gotta kill that last darling, my friends.

Although, to be fair... it wasn't always terrible while working a counter job when something like this would happen. Sometimes, when some out-of-control cornball (and they are legion), when they found themselve presented with an opportunity like this, and would decide to be "funny" at us while we were trapped having to do our jobs, and thinking they're the first to say the joke we'd already heard a dozen times that very shift, it'd be funny to not even acknowledge their joke, and to just proceed with the transaction as if everything was normal. The crestfallen look on their face as the joke falls flat was always funny. As was pretending to be confused by the joke, and to respond by telling them you don’t have whatever joke title they offered, but you do have the correctly-titled one, and then ask them with a straight face “did you mean that one?” Seeing just how much of their time you could waste simply by “not understanding” their joke was occasionally the perfect distraction during a particularly boring shift.

But anyway…

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice opens with Ben Schwartz belting out a rendition of “Why Should I Worry?” by the great Billy Joel as Dodger the dog in Disney’s all-animal animated version of Oliver Twist, Oliver & Company, so… I was a really big fan of this, as "Why Should I Worry" is one of the many songs that might be playing in my head on a loop at any moment on any day. In this scene, Ben Schwartz is playing Symon, and judging by the background context, Symon is a scientist and this is his lab, which probably a bit off'-the-books, just judging by some of its appearance, most likely because it appears that Symon is working on building a Time Machine.

This is confirmed when the Time Machine suddenly kicks on, and the first thing Symon does is grab his gun and starts babbling about how he'll get the money he owes, he promises. A blindlingly bright light emanates from a cylindrical chamber in the middle of the lab, which is probably the Time Machine's transporter pad. This is confirmed as a figure emerges from the light. Symon raises his gun, but the figure fires first. In the ensuing gun battle, Symon is killed, and the lab catches fire, consuming all of Symon's notes and equipment.

The figure turns out to be C-tier big doofus Vince Vaughn, who stands over Symon's dead body as the flames quickly grown out of control, watching it all burn, and then says with a sigh "Well... fuck..." Or something like that. Basically, it's clear that this was not the result Vince Vaughn was looking for.

Next, we meet Sosa, a mob boss celebrating Jimmy Boy, his adopted son, being released from prison. Sosa is throwing Jimmy Boy a series of Welcome Home parties, starting out at a hotel, and all the gangsters are there. And while this party isn't exactly full of Dick Tracy villains, there’s definitely a lot of weird fuckers there, all with names like Roid Rage Ryan or Dumbass Tony.

Before kicking off the party, Sosa announces to the assembled gangsters that one of them is a rat who is responsible for Jimmy Boy going to prison, and that he is going to find out who, and then he's going to kill them. This gets the party off to an awkward start, but once the terrible club music begins, it quickly recovers.

Among the gangsters is Nick, who we just saw kill Symon. Nick is a loan shark, whose wife Alice is having an affair with a fellow gangster, a hitman called Quick Draw Mike. The two are obviously having some problems in their marriage, but Nick doesn't seem to know about Alice's affair, or at least, not that it's happening with Mike. So, knowing that Nick will be busy schmoozing at the party, Alice and Mike head upstairs to a hotel room for a bit of the ol' in-and-out. But before they can get started with having the sex on each other, there's a knock at the door. It's Nick. While Alice hides, Mike answers, and Nick asks Mike to come with him, that he has a job he needs help on.

Eagle-eyed viewers will note that this Nick is dressed the same as Time Machine Lab Shoot-out Nick, and not like Welcome Back Party Nick...

Nick needs Mike to take someone out. Right away, Mike has two problems with this. One, he's fucking Alice, so this might be a set-up. Two, Mike has recently had a crisis of conscience, so he is no longer willing to kill, and he is actually planning to leave the gang. He tells Nick this, and surprisingly, Nick is fine with it, but he still needs Mike's help, can he just do this last job as a favor? Wary, Mike agrees to help Nick with a job.

That's when things get weird.

Nick drives Mike to Nick's house, and tells him that, while he circles the block, he needs Mike to go knock on the front door, and to then use chloroform to knock out whoever it is that answers, no matter how strange it may seem. Following a brief discussion of what chloroform is, Mike does as asked, and discovers that his target is Nick himself, and it is here that eagle-eyed viewers will note that this Nick is the Nick wearing the same outfit as Welcome Home Party Nick, and not the outfit that the Nick who is currently circling the block is wearing. After some initial confusion and a bit of a scuffle, where the other Nick eventually shows up too, it's explained to Mike that the Nick who enlisted his help is actually Nick from six months in the future.

But while explaining this, present-day Nick escapes, setting off a farcical train of time-traveling gangster shenanigans. Will Future Nick right his past wrongs? Will Present Nick decide to become Future Nick? Will Mike find peace? Will Alice find love? Will Jimmy Boy manage to get a boner despite all the build-up, pressure to perform, and cocaine? All these questions and more will be answered...

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a funny action-comedy romp in a similar vein to films like Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Men In Black, or Innerspace, etc. It has a lot of the expected "multiple versions of the same character" kind of mix ups, and a few unexpected ones too, in a story of love, regret, second chances, double crosses, balletic gun play, and a heaping helping of quips, all while adhering to the same "One Timeline/The Future Is Not Set" time travel rules found in movies like Looper or Terminator or Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. It’s a broad comedy that isn't quite as funny as it thinks it is, and maybe overstays its welcome a bit, but it's mostly a good time. Plus, the John Woo-lite action climax is fun.

I think it's fair to call this a Gen X movie by Gen Xers and for Gen Xers. That's where the comedy mostly feels like it's coming from, and that's what it feels like it's aiming at. The same can be said for it's strange mix of needledrops too. Tone-wise, I was put in mind of something like Grosse Pointe Blank, but that said, this film is definitely missing the spark that made Grosse Pointe Blank a classic.

I think the problem is, Grosse Point Blank was about nostalgia, specifically how you can never go home again, and you can never regain what was lost, because it wasn't actually lost, its time had just passed, and how, ultimately, that was good. Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice isn't about nostalgia, it's just built out of it. Yes, I enjoyed Ben Schwartz singing "Why Should I Worry?" but why was that scene in the movie? Did it actually mean anything? Did the lyrics have any kind of relevance for the story, or his character? Was this the film signaling that the themes of Oliver Twist would be reflected in this movie? No. Not that I could see at least. As far as I could tell, it was just there to be fun. And that's not a bad thing–this also seems to be pretty indicative of the whole movie's general attitude too–but at the same time, it's also a very shallow thing.

The same could be said of the Gilmore Girls discussion too, the PG-rated Bastard Child of Tarantino's famous "Madonna discussion" from the film Reservior Dogs. The discussion itself, its delivery, was fun and funny and cute, especially if you've seen even a little bit of the Gilmore Girls, and it illustrates how Alice and Mike are better for each other than Alice and Nick were, as well as the differences between Present Nick and Future Nick. The problem is the film already effectively conveyed this, so it's just re-walking already walked ground, which means that this scene is nothing more than a fun indulgence, and much like the "Why Should I Worry" opening, a shallow one.

And that's the film's whole problem. It's full of random and disconnected pop culture references. The numbers from Lost (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) are written on a whiteboard in Symon's lab, along with a note that says "Do Not Use." Mike sends Alice a text that says "UR IN DANGER GIRL," which is a quote from the movie Ghost. Jimmy Boy has a back tattoo that says "It's all in the reflexes," a quote from Big Trouble in Little China. The After After After Party plays the song from the unforgettable Blood Rave in Blade. None of these are bad things, in fact, they're beloved things, but it's fair to ask why. Why are these nods included in this movie? It's fine the answer is obviously "because I like them," or "because they're funny," but the lack of any kind of meaning there only highlights the general lack of meaning in the film itself.

I think the hollowness of pointlessly including these kinds of random nostalgia callbacks is best reflected in Nick's bowling ball collection. Briefly glimpsed in his secret sex apartment, there's a rack of maybe a dozen different bowling balls there, and we see them when they are focused on two or three times. Those glimpses are enough to tell us that these balls are special, that this is a display, that these aren't some bowling balls Nick bowls with, that they've been specifically collected, they're unique. This is especially clear, if you happen to notice that one of the balls on the rack is this one...

This, of course, is the weapon of The Bowler in the movie Mystery Men.

A superhero of Champion City, The Bowler is a legacy hero, the daughter of the 1970s superhero known as Carmine The Bowler, a man who decided to utilize his exceptional bowling skills to rid the city of crime. He was murdered by Tony P, the leader of the Disco Boys. Years later, his ghost confronted his daughter while she was a graduate school, demanding that she seek revenge on his killer. She agreed, but only as long as he agreed that she could return to graduate school afterward. Carmine agreed to the terms, so they took his skull and went to the local pro shop and had it encased in a bowling ball. Now, they strike out at crime, cleaning out Champion City's gutters, and sparing no criminals.

So, this specific bowling ball's appearance here, displayed as it is, leads me to suspect that this collection is all supposed to be famous bowling balls featured in movies. So naturally I wonder, what other famous bowling balls are here? Is one of them the ball where Ernie "Big Ern" McCracken showed the world that he is finally above the law? Is one of them the ball that led to the Pink Lady, Stephanie Zinone, kissing clean-cut British exchange student, and cousin to Sandy Olsson, Michael Carrington, even though he was the opposite of a Cool Rider? Is the ball that Fred Flintstone, using his famous tippy-toe technique, used to take down the evil Cliff Vandercave with amongst this assemblage? Did Donny, or Walter Sobchak, or Jesus Quintana, or even The Dude himself finger any of these balls?

We'll never know, because the film doesn't say either way, only shows them just enough so that you definitely see them. It neither explains their presense or uses them as part of the plot, not even as a weapon at any point. They're just there, and you either get the reference or you don't, I guess, but it ultimately doesn't matter if you do, because they otherwise have no impact on the story itself.

And because of these untethered pop culture references, there was something else that I noticed and it kind of annoyed me. It's a weird little thing where it could possibly be a reference, but it's possible that it's actually just a weird coincidence, but either way...

Jimmy Boy is played by the actor Jimmy Tatro. You might not recognize the name Jimmy Tatro, but you'll recognize his face. He appears in a lot of things (including the fantastic faux-crime documentary America Vandal, which you should definitely check out, if you haven't seen it). He's also in the sitcom Home Economics, about three "very different" adult siblings making their way in the world today. Jimmy Tatro plays Connor on Home Economics. He's the youngest sibling, but he is very well-off, much more than his two older siblings. He has a maid! Let me assure you, this fact alone? Hilarity ensues.

So...

The setting for the climax of Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, the After After After Party, takes place in the same apartment that is Connor's apartment in the sitcom. And because of all those other references that are so disconnected and meaningless within the context of the film and seemingly there for shits and giggles, I couldn't tell if this was a deliberate reference, or if it was just a random thing that happens when productions film in Winnipeg, Manitoba, because there just aren't that many locations available. And that annoyed me. And that's kind of what my whole feeling about this film is in the end. It was kind of fun, but kind of annoying too.

Anyway...

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice has a big and very recognizable cast, and they're all obviously having a good time, and turn in fun performances, and while there's a few good laughs here, and the action is fun, making the whole thing a basically enjoyable film, ultimately, it's just fluff. Mostly enjoyable fluff.

This is one for when you have a free evening, and it's free to watch.