Alluding to two titles from the 1970s (or close enough)

On Friday night, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice became the first 2026 film I've seen twice. It's a lot easier when a new movie you like is on a streamer, which this is -- Hulu to be exact, but we get it through Disney+ in Australia. You just throw it on whenever you like. Feels a bit luxurious.

Three months seems to be about how long you should wait within the current year, at a minimum, before rewatching a movie. Another favorite of the year so far crossed that threshold a few weeks ago, was also available on a streamer, and seemed like the perfect thing to watch that Friday or Saturday night, whichever one it was. But my wife got wind of the fact that I was going to watch it, got a little synopsis of the movie from me, and said "Well what if I want to watch that?" Meaning not tonight but some other time. So it might be another three months or more before I get to that one for the second time.

It's too early in the year to begin confirming movies that are placed highly on your in-progress ranked list, because even if something is currently well within your top ten, there's a good chance that ten or more movies will displace it before you get to January. Which means a confirmation rewatch isn't really necessary because by that point the movie will be your #17 of the year, and any movie can be your #17 of the year. You don't have to confirm it to be sure. 

But on Friday night I didn't know what new movie to watch or what old movie to watch -- as in, what movie from either this year or from any other year -- so I decided to throw on a rewatch, which starts to happen a lot less in the second half of the year as I start ramping up toward finalizing my list. (My line of demarcation between watching a mix of old movies, new movies and rewatches, and watching mostly movies from the current year, comes with the start of MIFF, which is about three weeks off.)

So Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice it was. 

I would say I liked this time travel/comedy/organized crime movie just about as much the second time as the first. I did notice a little bit of wobbly technique here and there -- a couple of the fight scenes have quite bad choreography, and the director, BenDavid Grabinski, uses a dated "partial slowmo" effect here and there that I can't really describe in words -- but this movie sings on the strength of its screenplay and performances, which were just as strong the second time. There's a moment in this film involving Vince Vaughn that I find quite profound, and that's all I'll say about it. Some great needle drops too. 

What I do want to say, today, is that I didn't even really realize it as I was watching it the first time, but this movie -- in title specifically, but even in some of its themes -- is an homage to two movies from the 1970s. 

Here's the first one:

And already I'm breaking the rules because Paul Mazursky's film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is from 1969. There's where the "or close enough" in the title of this post comes in.

Having a title consisting only of four names separated by three ampersands would be reason enough to conclude an allusion, but the fact that the final name is Alice in both scenarios pretty much cements it. 

Thematic similarities? This could also be a stretch, because one movie is about people experimenting with affairs and processing the aftermath of those affairs, while the other is about time travel and organized crime. But there's also an affair between Alice and either Mike or Nick (it's not a spoiler -- okay it's Mike) in this movie, so that's enough to grasp onto if you're desperate.

The thematic similarities are perhaps more clear in the second movie:

Elaine May's Mikey & Nicky -- which is not always presented with an ampersand though that certainly helps in this situation -- is more directly appropriate for this exercise, having come out in 1976, and also being in the same general genre as Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. The fact that the names of the two male characters are the same, albeit with Y's on the end, does not feel like a coincidence, especially when you have all the male names in the world to choose from when writing these characters.

There are quite a few similarities in the plot as well, in that one man is though to be a rat and becomes the target of a contract killer (though only a "cannibal assassin" in M & N & N & A), and the other tries to help him escape. 

This is the best kind of allusion, because it establishes your cinematic bonafides -- I love Mikey & Nicky, have less of a memory of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice -- while actually not having all that much to do with the story you're currently telling. In other words, BenDavid Grabinski cannot be accused of ripping anyone off, because the meat and potatoes of his story really have nothing to do with the two previous movies. He just wants us to know he likes them, and that's fun. 

And Grabinski's movie, in my humble opinion, is good enough, clever enough and memorable enough that perhaps someday, someone will allude to it too.