On the night that Mike (James Marsden) plans to quit his life of crime and elope with Alice (Eiza González), he is asked to do one last job with Nick (Vince Vaughn). The issue is that Nick is married to Alice and there are also two of him. Nick from the present time wants to kill Mike, whilst a time-travelling Nick from six months in the future has decided to save him.

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a thoroughly mediocre direct-to-streaming movie that is marginally saved by Vince Vaughn showing sparks of his heyday and a time travel plot. Without those two elements it would be barely worth reading the synopsis of, let alone watching.

The film plays out with two rather distinct plot lines.

The first follows Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro) being released from prison after a long stretch. He is the adopted son of mob boss Sosa (Keith David) and was in prison thanks to a rat in the organisation. Sosa wants to reward him with the death of the rat who put him away. Jimmy just wants to party. This entire part of the movie is risible. At no point do we get a sense of a dangerous criminal organisation, nor are any of the conversations or interactions between the criminal characters even remotely engaging.

The second follows future Nick, a man at peace with himself following a path of pragmatism and trying to make things right, and past Nick, a man filled with rage who is despicable to everyone around him. Vince Vaughn, once a man who made hit after hit in the comedy genre and who has expanded into more serious roles of late, delivers the different Nicks with aplomb. And occasionally there is a little spark where the comedy just clicks. Alongside him James Marsden and Eiza González make a good fist of the couple in love who want to run away together. Marsden does a better job leaning into the absurd nature of the comedy though.

The issue though is that even with those marginal sparks of life, everything on screen is something that anyone will have seen done better in countless other films. And that is before we come onto the stylistic complaints about the presentation. Director BenDavid Grabinski inserts an odd slow-motion feature on a few occasions that makes it feel like the film is juddering rather than inserting the ‘cool’ that is clearly intended, and then delivers a mawkish sing-a-long at a crucial moment.

The nostalgia of witnessing Vince Vaughn deliver a good performance just cannot save Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice from being the generic straight-to-streaming film that it is.