Film Review: "Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice" - The star-studded SXSW action-comedy is more odd than funny

What happens when you take a gangster story, a love triangle, a time-traveling do-gooder, and a $12 million budget — and then cast James Marsden and Vince Vaughn in it? Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice has an answer, though it may not be the one audiences are hoping for. Written and directed by BenDavid Grabinski, the film premiered at SXSW before landing on Hulu, and it arrives trailing the kind of quirky, R-rated promise that the ensemble cast advertises. The delivery is spottier than the premise.

The setup is essentially a gangster comedy with a sci-fi twist. Mike (James Marsden) and Nick (Vince Vaughn) are gangsters. Alice (Eiza González) is Nick’s wife, who is having an affair with Mike. When their mob boss, Sosa (Keith David), seeks vengeance for the incarceration of his son, Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro), Mike gets framed, and the only one coming to help set things right is Nick… not the current one, a Nick from the future.

The cast is the film's best and most frustrating quality. Marsden brings his usual charm, and Ben Schwartz — playing Alice's friend Symon — earns the film's biggest laughs, including a gleefully unhinged sequence involving "Why Should I Worry" from Oliver & Company that will delight Disney fans and feel completely at home in the film's chaotic register. The movie is peppered with Disney references beyond that, lending it an oddly specific personality. There are also fun cameos from Stephen Root (Office Space) and Emily Hampshire (Schitt’s Creek).

Grabinski's direction keeps the film at arm's length from its own potential. The tonal lurches — from action to broad comedy to dumb erectile dysfunction jokes — feel less like controlled chaos and more like a room of writers unable to agree on what kind of movie they were making. The time-travel mechanics are introduced efficiently enough, but the film doesn't do much with the concept beyond using it to double Vince Vaughn's screen time. The climactic convergence of all four principals — both Nicks, Mike, and Alice — generates some energy, but the film outlasts its own joke.

There's a rough charm to seeing this caliber of cast committed to material this strange. But "occasionally funny and frequently weird" is a ceiling, not a floor, and for a film with this much talent in the room, that ceiling feels uncomfortably low.

I give Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice 2 out of 5 stars.

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice begins streaming on Hulu on Friday, March 27th.