Summary
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a great movie, a fun, funny throwback to the kind of quirky genre-blending fare that rarely gets made these days.
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is the rare movie that is better in practice than it is on paper. Between the fussy title and a premise that skips blithely between multiple contorted genres, it’s easy to imagine that BenDavid Grabinski’s Hulu original is hipster nonsense. As it happens, it’s the most fun streaming movie of 2026 (thus far) by a mile, an inventive sci-fi action-comedy with a great cast and a script full of clever ideas that has the good sense to end before it starts to wear out its welcome.
To be fair, it’s only a sci-fi movie nominally. There’s a time-travel element to the plot, but it’s a development presented in the same blasé manner as a cannibal assassin. At its core, this is a very funny comedy with some smatterings of action that is mostly an excuse for Vince Vaughn (Nonnas, Bad Monkey) to play two versions of himself, and for James Marsden (Paradise) to reinvent himself as a surprisingly capable action star.
There isn’t a whiff of the sci-fi stuff in the opening of Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, which introduces the crime thriller elements of the plot. Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro, Scream 7) is fresh home from prison after an eight-year bid on the back of being ratted out by a member of his father, Sosa’s (Keith David, I Love LA), criminal crew. Sosa thinks that the rat is Quick-Draw Mike (Marsden), an assassin who works under one of Sosa’s chief lieutenants, Nick (Vaughn). However, Nick has actually framed Mike for having an affair with his wife, Alice (Eiza Gonzalez, Fountain of Youth).
Given how slick and funny all this is, the standard love triangle thriller plot would have probably worked just fine, with Mike and Alice on the lam from Sosa’s goons and hired killers. But it quickly takes a turn into unexpected territory when another version of Nick shows up, this one claiming to be from the future, having used a time machine built by a mad scientist pal of Alice’s named Symon (Ben Schwartz, Invincible) to come back and avert his greatest mistake, which is setting up his pal, Mike. And thus begins an effort to avert Mike’s demise by redoing events with the benefit of foresight.
Again, this description doesn’t quite do the movie justice. You get a bit of a clue as to its real quality in a cold open that offs Symon to the tune of Billy Joel’s “Why Should I Worry?”, which turns out to be the first of several note-perfect needle drops that Grabinski nails just for fun. You see it, too, in the subtly different performances that Vaughn delivers for his past and future selves, helping to sell the weight of regret that separates the two, which is, of course, the movie’s underlying theme, such as it has one. But you see it mainly in the whip-smart and very funny script – also by Grabinski – that weaves everything together, and the needlessly good action sequences that punctuate the plot. You could watch this film multiple times over and still get caught short by the gags, including a brilliant Alf nod that had me rolling.
This, I think, is the thing about Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. It’s a funnier comedy than most outright comedies and a better action movie than most actioners. It’s not content to just be okay at any one thing; it endeavours to be the best possible version of each. Characters like Jimmy Boy with relatively small roles are instantly memorable all the same because they’re totally committed to. Tatro, wasted as a nothing bro-dude victim in the latest Scream movie, is simply superb here. Even his entourage, which includes Roid Rage Ryan (Lewis Tan, Cobra Kai) and, my favourite, Dumbass Tony (Arturo Castro, Road House), have real personalities and are given their own little moments. Dolph Lundgren (The Rats: A Witcher Tale) shows up for a single scene and almost walks off with the movie.
It’s just a great, fun movie, a kind of throwback to the halcyon days when stuff like this got made more regularly because there wasn’t as much financial pressure from mega corp-owned streaming platforms, and a cult movie could make its money back through the DVD run. It’s proudly weird but weirdly competent in everything it’s trying to do, and if you’re in the market for just one knockabout good-time flick this or indeed any weekend, you should look no further.
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