By Dan Skip Allen

Films revolving around time-saver or a time machine have been far and in-between ever since Back to the Future made this a popular trope in movies. The Hot Tub Time Machine, Totally Killer, About Time, and Palm Springs come to mind as recent examples of this genre lately. These, like most film genres, can be hit or miss regarding their success.  The latest movie dealing with time travel and a time machine is “Mike & Nick and Nick & Alice”. It’s far from the best this genre has to offer and is, in fact, a very contrived lazy example of this type of film.

In a cold opening, there is a man in a makeshift laboratory played by Ben Schwartz. He is working when a light comes on in a device in the background and a man comes out of the device in a shroud of smoke. The man in the lab starts shooting at the cold figure that comes out of the device. That figure then shoots back, killing the man in the lab. Fast-forward the present time where the man now named Nick (Vince Vaughn) goes to pick up a friend Mike (James Marsden) who he asks to come with him on a drive after they eat dinner He then tells Mike to go knock on a random door at a house he doesn’t know. He then tells him he must chloroform the man at the house. This doesn’t exactly go as planned, but after a struggle, the man is finally subdued by Mike. He tells Nick that it’s his he has knocked out. Nick says he knows. This is the beginning of the story that is a bit confusing.

A subplot of this story revolves around Mike’s relationship with Alice (Eliza Gonzales), his girlfriend. They are all part of a family of gangsters celebrating the return of Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro), the adopted son of Sosa (Kieth David who recently got out of prison. The David character thinks there is a snitch in the family, which is why his son was put in prison. He believes it’s Mike, and so Nick tries to enlist the help of Alice to get Mike away from those who believe he’s the snitch. It’s a very complicated story. Even I, one of those who watched the entire film, was confused by some of the elements. Understood all the gangster stuff. It was the time travel stuff that was convoluted to me.

The narrative is told in chapters. Each chapter is a part of the party to celebrate Jimmy Tatro’s character. The chapters: The Party, The After Party, The After After Party, The After After After Party, which show how crazy this movie gets the further along it goes. There are a lot of drugs, naked ladies, and craziness, but this is just a result of the main story being so whacky to begin with. The script by Ben David Grabinsky is incomprehensible. It’s so out there that it’s hard to say how good it is. I feel it’s hard to pin down if this was an accident regarding  how confusing this story was to decipher. Or was it on purpose?  I think another pass on it may have made it more clear from a viewers perspective. 

Vince Vaughn is an actor I’ve liked over the years. He has done some great films like The Wedding Crashers, Singers and Rudy, just to name a few. He blends a nice comedic aspect of his acting with a dramatic side from time to time. Here, he plays a gangster who time travels back 6 months to try and help himself and Marsden’s character. I just didn’t buy him as a gangster in this story, and furthermore, I noticed he didn’t seem like himself as an actor. I can usually tell if he’s enjoying the role he’s playing. It didn’t look like he was enjoying himself in this role. I think that’s part of why this movie wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. He, who is the star, didn’t seem like he wanted to be in this film even though he was in it. Unlike other movies he’s been in in the past. Besides that, I’ll always look forward to seeing him, though, because of his usual ability to make me laugh. Maybe next time.

Now to the time travel element of this film. It’s kind of washed over a bit after the first chapter. This was the main reason this story got started in the first place, and it’s forgotten about after the first half hour of the movie. The Schwartz character is basically washed over as he didn’t exist. There are a few flashbacks to explain things they forgot to put in the main story. As if they completely didn’t realize they needed these segments to help explain this ridiculous premise. I like gangster movies and I also like time travel films but they didn’t work together at all. There was a lot about this film that didn’t work for me. 

The director who also wrote the script tried to infuse some comedic aspects into this story with all the crazy Party stuff and some dialogue from actors like Kieth and Marsden.  And even another couple of characters played by Stephen Root and Dolf Lundgren, but none of this worked. I didn’t laugh at these characters once. Their dialogue just came across as dumb and ridiculous. Also, there was a whole Gilmore Girls shtick between Vaughn, Marsden, and Gonzales that completely whiffed in context to the rest of the film. It was so out of place in this story. It was meant as comic relief but didn’t make me laugh or care at all about it. I never watched that show, so that’s probably why it didn’t work for me. Among other things.

“Mike & Nick and Nick and Alice” is an almost incomprehensible story to decipher. It combines gangsters with time travel, and these two genres should never be combined together ever again. This didn’t work. It’s convoluted and contrived. It has some subplots that are an afterthought to the main storyline but may have been more interesting if the writer/director delved into them more. The love story between the Marsden and Gonzales characters was very interesting to me. Instead, they focused on this party aspect of the story more than I would have liked. Vaughn also seems like he didn’t even want to be in this movie. I could tell he wasn’t enjoying himself at all. I didn’t enjoy watching this film either. Maybe next time, I’ll like a movie written/directed by Ben David Grabinski because this one wasn’t for me. 

2 stars