{"id":361613,"date":"2026-03-27T20:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T20:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/361613\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T20:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T20:36:09","slug":"mike-nick-nick-alice-is-a-genre-blending-delight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/361613\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’ Is a Genre Blending Delight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes you watch a movie, and instantly, it starts speaking to you. That happened to me when I sat down to watch the new Hulu film<\/a>, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. The film begins with a character, for no good reason other than \u201cWhy the hell not?\u201d singing one of my favorite Disney songs<\/a> of all time. I won\u2019t say which, but it\u2019s a deeper cut for sure,<\/a> and not something most people would think to randomly open a movie with. But writer-director BenDavid Grabinski did just that, and he immediately hooked me in.<\/p>\n

That sense of \u201cLet\u2019s do this just because it\u2019s cool and fun\u201d permeates throughout Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. It\u2019s a mad mash-up of genres, ideas, music, and action that probably shouldn\u2019t work, but absolutely does, as long as you can keep up.<\/p>\n

In the film, Vince Vaughn plays Nick, a gangster who discovers a time machine and uses it to go back to one of the most crucial nights of his life. On that night, his friend Mike (James Marsden) and wife Alice (Eiza Gonz\u00e1lez) both went through some major, major life events because of Nick, and Nick wants to set things right. The only problem is, there are two Nicks in this timeline, so Future Nick recruits Present Nick to help everything go down.<\/p>\n

The story and relationship between that core four (well, three) are the main drive of the film, but it\u2019s also juxtaposed by a complementary story filled with a who\u2019s who of excellent actors. Keith David (The Thing) is Sosa, the boss of the crime family they\u2019re up against. Jimmy Tatro (Scream 7) plays his son Jimmy Boy. Emily Hampshire (Schitt\u2019s Creek) is a cop named Sam. Arturo Castro (Tron: Ares) and Lewis Tan (Mortal Kombat) are thugs named Dumbass Tony and Roid Rage Ryan. Ben Schwartz (Sonic the Hedgehog) is the inventor Symon (yes, with a \u201cY\u201d), and Stephen Root (Office Space) is a mysterious assassin.<\/p>\n

Yeah. It\u2019s a lot, and that\u2019s the major vibe with Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. Grabinski [whom, full disclosure, I\u2019ve known personally for several years] puts his actors and the audience into a spiral of joy as we get cool action scenes, laugh-out-loud comedy moments, pop culture references, and even some romance and heart sprinkled in there too. It\u2019s incredibly rewarding watching these great actors go through this story, especially because all of it is so original. We\u2019ve never seen a time-travel gangster action comedy before. So, we never quite know where things are going. It certainly helps, too, that all those actors have no qualms about getting incredibly silly (or sappy) whenever the situation calls for it. And it calls for it a lot.<\/p>\n

Plus, all of it is set to a fantastic mix tape of needle drops that are either completely on the nose or totally random and weird. Both of which work. And, ultimately, that\u2019s also how we felt about Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice as a whole. It\u2019s a very unique, out-there movie with so much hilarious randomness that at times, it feels like a bit too much. Like it could go off the rails and never come back. But that never happens. Eventually, everything comes together beautifully, leaving us with a film that\u2019s so entertaining and sweet, you can\u2019t help but bask in that glorious excess and passion.<\/p>\n

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is now streaming on Hulu.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sometimes you watch a movie, and instantly, it starts speaking to you. That happened to me when I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[167591,162887,146,85,46,90065,158734,397,11914],"class_list":{"0":"post-361613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-bendavid-grabinski","9":"tag-eiza-gonzalez","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-james-marsden","14":"tag-mike-and-nick-and-nick-and-alice","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-vince-vaughn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}