Of all the upcoming action movies headed our way in the coming months, I can safely say that Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is the only one that, after first watching the trailer, I said, “Wait, what is this movie about?” It seems Mike and Nick are in love with the same woman — Alice, naturally — which seems pretty straightforward until you throw in the time travel. Critics screened the movie before it hit the 2026 movie calendar, and they’re here to help us sort through it.
The cast is promising, starring James Marsden as Mike, Vince Vaughn as Nick and Eiza González as Alice. Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’s supporting cast is equally as stellar, according to Kristy Puchko of Mashable, especially Ben Schwartz, but also Keith David, Jimmy Tatro, Emily Hampshire, Stephen Root and more. The critic calls this “defiantly outside the box” adventure a “must-see crowd-pleaser,” writing:
[Writer/director BenDavid Grabinski's] screenplay smartly sets up not a familiar framework, but a sandbox where his ensemble is invited to play. What they collectively come up with is an action-comedy that delivers on laughs and thrills, but also does much more. The sci-fi elements shake up the standard gangster drama, allowing for mind-bending reveals and a surprisingly sophisticated psychological self-awareness about regret, grief, and love.
RogerEbert’s Brian Tallerico rates the movie 3 out of 4 stars, loving how BenDavid Grabinski pushes back against the sanding down of streaming originals. Vince Vaughn, meanwhile, does his best work in years in the dual roles of Nick and “Future Nick,” who travels back in time to right a wrong he committed against Mike. The critic writes:
Article continues belowWithout overdoing the theme, Vaughn and Grabinski do a wonderful job playing Nick’s regret. ‘Future Nick’ carries himself differently, speaking more softly and conveying the weight of crushing shame, the hope so many people carry that they could go back and fix what they’ve broken. It’s a truly great dual performance from Vaughn, his best film work in years. While Marsden remains one of our more underrated comic performers, this is Vaughn’s movie.
Brian Truitt of USA TODAY also gives Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice 3 stars out of 4, writing that it doesn’t quite make the most of its time-travel premise but can be forgiven because it delivers a unique story, colorful personalities and a sneakily heartwarming message. Truitt continues:
Mike & Nick plays a lot of its violent escapades for laughs – and things do get pretty gory, as the characters in the movie's title face off with an organization full of well-armed bad guys. It’s also not that invested in the time-travel element, which in itself is sort of humorous. … There’s a Doctor Who reference and a little testing of how it works, but the characters are way more interested in debating Lorelai’s boyfriends from Gilmore Girls than laws of science.
Germain Lussier of Gizmodo says there’s “so much hilarious randomness” in Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice that you can’t help but “bask in that glorious excess and passion.” The movie gives off vibes of, “Let’s do this just because it’s cool and fun,” Lussier writes, and while he says it all probably shouldn’t work, it very, very much does. The critic says:
Grabinski … 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’s incredibly rewarding watching these great actors go through this story, especially because all of it is so original. We’ve never seen a time-travel gangster action comedy before. So, we never quite know where things are going.
Jesse Hassenger of AV Club, meanwhile, doesn’t share the above opinions, giving the movie a C- and calling it a “strenuous misfire.” The critic gives Vince Vaughn credit for imparting genuine pathos into his “future” character, but overall, the time travel element of the movie seems to be just for marketing purposes. Hassenger explains:
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is one of those would-be genre-mashers eager to call itself a sci-fi buddy-action gangster rom-com, despite not actually having much of any of them. The sci-fi is a shrug, the buddy chemistry is pro forma, the action is a frenzy, the romance is confined to a single cute black-and-white flashback, and that just leaves the gangsters—an extremely movie-ish group with hilarious (?) names like Dumbass Tony and Roid Rage Ryan.
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice sounds like a bizarre and fun time, given what the critics are saying (the title alone indicates some silliness is afoot). It’s garnered a 74% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, and if this sounds like a good way to spend 107 minutes, the time-travel gangster flick is available to stream now with a Hulu subscription.
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