‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’ Review: BenDavid Grabinski Asks ‘What if Wong Kar-Wai Made a Gangster Love Triangle Sci-Fi Action Buddy Comedy’? [A-] SXSW

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is an increasingly rare variety of film, the kind that movie fans keep clamoring for studios to finance and produce. It’s a mid-budget, movie-star-and-character-actor-driven high-concept sci-fi action-gangster buddy comedy romance, as reverent of the films it’s directly riffing on as it is eager to break them down to their building blocks, with its own sense of filmmaking aptitude in the process. This is the type of movie that, had it been released 30 years ago, would have been a huge original breakout at the theatrical box office before going on to quadruple its production budget in DVD rentals, which would, in turn, spur a sequel. Instead, it heads straight to Hulu at the end of March, robbing audiences of the opportunity to experience all of its delightful genre delirium together rather than alone, with the invigorating laughter and reactions of a locked-in crowd.

Regardless, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice patently earns your time alone or with others. Writer-director BenDavid Grabinski has showcased his attraction to genre and franchise subversion with his 2021 feature Happily and in the text-shattering Scott Pilgrim Takes Off! He boosts that energy further here, melding elements from a smattering of pulp action flicks and relationship genres that take care to delineate their characters’ emotions and interiority.

That’s clear from the jump: Grabinski borrows a title structure, a name, and a focus on the relational ramifications between a group of four people from the film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, and tilts the idea askew with his everything-goes sense of play. His rollicking approach is evident in the fact that two of the four in the group are the same person. At a Welcome Home party for Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro), the fresh-from-prison son of gangster boss Sosa (Keith David), thrown within the film’s core criminal syndicate — known simply as The Organization — a member known as Quick Draw Mike (James Marsden) is pulled away by his longtime partner Nick (Vince Vaughn) with the sudden task of subduing a target. What Nick doesn’t tell Mike is that the target is the present version of Nick, and that the Nick Mike has been talking to has time-traveled six months into the past.

As it turns out, Future Nick has returned to the night his partner died due to Nick’s actions, after he framed Mike for being a rat within The Organization, letting him be taken and devoured by the foreboding cannibal assassin, The Barron. Why did he do that? Well, that’s the other layer: Mike has been sleeping with Nick’s wife Alice (Eiza González), the two having fallen in love and preparing for more together as Mike mulls over leaving The Organization. The regret over losing his best friend to his own hand has eaten at him ever since, and now he’s back to stop himself from letting it happen.

This is undoubtedly a lot of overlapping dynamics driving the plot forward, but Grabinski develops the situation with clarity. It embraces the usual tangles of a time-travel narrative and disrupts them sharply. Usually, the audience is placed in the time-traveler’s perspective, riding with them as they suddenly relive the same day, moving through the interactions and patterns already seen in the movie. Mike & Nick sticks us with Nick and Alice, suddenly faced with the prospect of two Nicks in the world, as Future Nick explains that he’s lived through this night before and knows what to do to change the future.

Grabinski remixes a pile of gangster and sci-fi movie tropes and stock figures through a supercut of artistic touchstones: within the genre mechanics, you’ve got the reformed gangster who wants out of the life, the forbidden love that acts as a double-crossing between partners, and the elusive rat that the film pivots its plot around. If the characters come off one-note, it’s because Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a study in the deconstruction of type. Grabinski isn’t satisfied with the straightforward emotional confrontations of this film’s progenitors, not even those of the other film that he borrows names and dynamics from, Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky.

Instead, he takes these more intense, often devastating stories and makes them good-hearted and fun, but still poignant and action-packed in equal measure. Grabinski takes the time to carve out the emotional backstories of these characters, occasionally stopping down for black-and-white flashbacks to detail how they’ve arrived at their current predicament. He also defies the obvious expectation that the film will require an overarching violent conflict between Present Nick and his friends and his future self as they try to stop him. Instead, we get all that out of the way early to move into the four-person relationship drama and comedy between two friends and their shared love interest, with each version of Nick at such different stages of self-awareness that they properly play as two separate people.

That’s down to the performances as well. Vaughn is excellent at swiveling between his two characters, his future self in a state of such clear, calm awareness about what needs to happen that it stands in stark contrast to his present self, still hurt and facing the turmoil that Future Nick has had time to grieve. He has a warm, affable buddy dynamic with Marsden, with the film leaning into the affecting texture of their genuine friendship, and González brings real agency to the role as Grabinski’s script elevates her above a mere gangster love interest. Elsewhere, the superb supporting cast helps round out this amusing world of lopsided criminal-underworld stereotypes, including a pair of truly game and funny performances from David as the menacing kingpin and Tatro as his dopey adopted son, who is afforded a host of stupidly genius punchlines.

That sense of humor from Grabinski may make or break the movie for you, as he’s shamelessly indulgent with his millennial pop culture references, whose incongruous nature within a gangster film serves as an anchor for the whole joke style. Shout-outs are made to Capri-Sun, The Tigger Movie, and I can confidently say you have never seen another film that features James Marsden, Eiza González, and two Vince Vaughns shot in dramatic 360-orbital rotation as they debate which boyfriend was the best for Rory on Gilmore Girls.

It speaks to the confidence of the writing that these come off as a natural part of what is simply a funny movie, rather than as forced attempts to keep the audience’s attention through cheap references. It helps, too, that Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is otherwise well-made. Cinematographer Larry Fong ensures that this is always a pleasure to look at, and stunt coordinators Brian Ho and Justin Yu develop a collection of visceral, inventive brawl and firefight sequences, seamlessly crafted to feature both versions of Nick in the action and regularly imprinted with some Hong Kong influence in the edit — specifically recalling Wong Kar-Wai’s famous step-printing effect, lending a dreamlike quality to the scenes of violence. Meanwhile, the pop propulsion of the film’s scene-to-scene movement brings to mind the zippy energy of an Edgar Wright-type action-comedy.

Within it all, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a genuinely charming and touching friendship story and romance that takes its characters’ motivations to heart and endears its audience to this motley assortment of silly, feeling characters. Every performer is given an opportunity to relish the script’s alternating modes of riffing, banter, and genre-anatomizing, while Grabinski impressively manages his overflowing world of big concepts and galvanizing action. We may not live in a world where a movie like this becomes the word-of-mouth blockbuster of the year, but that simply makes it all the more pressing to enjoy a big, entertaining, original studio swing like this when it comes along.

Grade: A-

This review is from the 2026 SXSW Film Festival. It will be released on Hulu in the United States and Disney+ internationally on March 27.