There are plenty of reasons for me to be wary of Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (beyond having to type so many ampersands each time I refer to the title). It’s a modern mob action comedy that at first glance looks like a Joe Carnahan Smokin’ Aces-type thing (I’m just not a fan of the subgenre). There’s not one, but two Vince Vaughns. It’s a straight to streaming movie (check it out right now on Hulu or Disney+ or both because I’m still not sure what’s going on with those two services!). I guess that’s it, so maybe “plenty” isn’t accurate. But it doesn’t matter because Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (which I will no longer refer to by its full title out of ampersand protest) is surprisingly entertaining, weird, and delightful.
In simple terms, MNNA is a love triangle movie about a mobster (Vaugh) who stumbles into a time machine and uses the opportunity to spare the life of his wife’s (Eiza González) lover and his mob buddy (James Marsden). Okay, that’s not exactly simple, but I swear the movie is easy to follow. The main thing is that the title is accurate: there are two Nicks (a future and a present), and one Mike and one Alice, and they’re all on a mission to save Mike.
Mike has been set up as a rat, so the mob, run by the always awesome Keith David, wants him dead, especially as his son, Jimmy Tatro, has just been released from a prison sentence he thinks Mike is responsible for. So while the time travel hijinks are being worked out, the film keeps cutting to different levels of Tatro’s welcome back party. It’s all very silly, but mostly funny.
This leads to quite a bit of R-rated violence played for laughs, which can be difficult. If it’s too hardcore, it becomes disturbing, and if it’s too silly, it becomes annoying. For the most part, writer/director BenDavid Grabinski walks that tightrope providing just enough gory headshots and gore to keep things funny, but not too funny. It helps that beyond the three, technically four, main characters, you don’t really care what happens to anyone. Tatro and David are funny (as is Tatro’s dumbass buddy played by Arturo Castro), but I don’t care about them, and I certainly don’t care about the dozens of other mobsters just hanging out waiting to die a horrible death.
Still, action comedy alone can get a little boring. That’s where Grabinski’s quirky pop culture shit and fun needle drops come into play. I don’t want to ruin much, but if you’re a fan of Gilmore Girls, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by this. I’ve never seen the show, but I could still appreciate the comedy of these characters geeking out over the show. Beyond that, my personal favorite random bit was Tatro’s Big Trouble in Little China back tattoo that includes the title of the movie and its year of release. More on Tatro in a bit.
The needle drops were my favorite aspect of the film. As a big Steve Winwood fan, I found the use of “Valerie” perfect. And dropping the music from the Reptile fight scene from Mortal Kombat into an action scene felt like Grabinski was personally tailoring the film to me.
Back to Tatro. He was the all-star of the film for me. I could’ve watched an entire movie of Tatro and Castro being morons and talking about their dicks. And a scene with David describing how he came to adopt Tatro was the icing on the cake. Silly, idiosyncratic moments like that are what make comedies memorable, and MNNA has enough to warrant an annoying Screen Rant YouTube video (“Every Pop Culture Reference, Needle Drop, and Weird Joke You Might Have Missed in Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice!”).
Perhaps what surprised me the most with this film was Vince Vaughn’s dual performance. I got tired of Vaughn’s schtick a long time ago, so the prospect of two fast-talking neurotic mobsters worried me. Thankfully, he plays the whole film rightfully somber. In both versions of himself, he’s dealing with depressing things: the failure of his marriage and the death of his friend. So instead of speed-running jokes the whole movie, he comes across as a little numb, and it works.