At the world premiere of “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” at the SXSW Film Festival, BenDavid Grabinski gave a few introductory words to the audience, which he read from his smartphone. He actually wrote the following speech for an award at the MTV Movie Awards, “but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist anymore, which really sucks.” In fact, this little anecdote says a lot about the filmmaker’s sense of humor, as it also seems to be quite out of date.
Admittedly, a few of the characters and plot elements from “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” exude similar retro vibes to the almost 30 (!) recorded pop and rock hits from the 80s and 90s. Billy Joel’s “Why Should I Worry?” and “Don’t Look Back in Anger” by Oasis are even sung along with enthusiasm. But the very chatty gangster comedy with a time travel twist, featuring James Marsden (“Sonic 3”) and Vince Vaughn (“Freaky”) in a double act, never really gets going.
The gangsters didn’t just copy the suits from Quentin Tarantino’s “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice”.
After six years in prison, thanks to a traitor in his own ranks, the criminal Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro) is released again. Gangster boss Sosa (Keith David) welcomes his offspring with a big welcome party – at which he announces that the supposed “rat” is to be executed that same night. So Sosa instructs his high-ranking employee Nick (Vince Vaughn) to track down the delinquent: the crook “Quick Draw” Mike (James Marsden) who wants to get out.
However, Nick spares Mike because he himself traveled six months into the past from the future in a time machine and therefore knows the real culprit. The Nick from the future manages to convince the Nick from the present of Mike’s innocence. Together with Nick’s wife and Mike’s affair Alice (Eiza González), the men do everything they can to prevent the ordered execution…
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Filmmaker BenDavid Grabinski, who is presenting only his second directorial work here 15 years after the black comedy “Happily – Good Luck in Marriage, Unlucky in Murder”, obviously has a preference for strange gangster characters, which were particularly popular in the 1990s. Vince Vaughn impresses with his dry humor in his dual role and James Marsden delivers a confident performance as a frightened nervous wreck. But then it ends: Jimmy Tatro sets up his Jimmy Boy, who runs around in a Hawaiian shirt and with a chav attitude, as a Markie Mark parody. Potentially funny, but the dialogue jokes about his lack of education (what does Phoenix rise from the ashes have to do with Phoenix, Arizona?) just don’t work.
And when an idiotic crook with the telling role name Dumbass Tony (Arturo Castro) asks Jimmy about the condition of his “best piece” when they meet again, it’s more likely to be a shame than a laugh. Much more successful is a conversation between the eponymous quartet about the individual characters and their relationships in the popular TV series “Gilmore Girls”, while the camera slowly circles around the discussants – a nod to the opening scene from Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs”, in which gangsters wearing suits interpret the lyrics to the song “Like A Virgin” by Madonna.
Dolph Lundgren as a cannibal
However, all this empty chatter doesn’t really bring forward the scenario, which is simmering on a dramaturgical back burner and becoming increasingly tiring. The plot simply lacks subtlety or surprises. Even the confrontation with a presumably cannibalistic hitman named The Barron (guest appearance by action icon Dolph Lundgren) cannot prevent the time travel plot from babbling along in a rather leisurely manner and, above all, with very little tension.
It is only in the final 20 minutes that an extremely bloody, but not particularly elaborate shooting festival breaks out, in which an entire gangster house is dismantled – before an annoying, laboriously constructed cliffhanger for a sequel is added. It becomes abundantly clear here that a large part of the budget probably went into music rights and had to be saved somewhere else.
Conclusion: Even a top-class soundtrack and an enthusiastic ensemble cannot save the retro action comedy with its many humorous nonsense. With “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” you tend to press the fast forward button again and again, especially in the boring, babbling middle section.