BenDavid Grabinski & James Marsden Talk Time Travel, Friendship, and the Chaos Behind Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice
Against the current wave of franchise-heavy filmmaking, where nearly every major release is tied to existing IP, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice feels like a glitch in the system in the best way possible. Directed by BenDavid Grabinski and now streaming on Hulu, the film almost shouldn’t exist. And yet, it does, loud, chaotic, and refreshingly original.
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At a time when studios lean heavily on sequels, reboots, and cinematic universes, this film carves out its own lane. It plays like the kind of offbeat, personality-driven project cinephiles constantly say Hollywood has abandoned. But here it is, unapologetically weird and brimming with creative energy.
That originality is exactly what makes it work. The film blends mob comedy absurdity with time travel antics, never over explaining its mechanics and instead trusting the audience to go along for the ride. It is less concerned with rules and more focused on tone, rhythm, and character.
Grabinski leans fully into that mindset, telling me, “You kind of are mixing and matching things that feel right tonally. Sometimes it just makes things funnier, sometimes it makes it more exciting.”
It is that freedom that gives the film its edge. Rather than playing it safe, it embraces unpredictability, letting moments breathe or spiral in ways that feel spontaneous.
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When I spoke with James Marsden, he reflected on how rare it is to be part of something that feels this distinct. Known for everything from X-Men to Sonic the Hedgehog, Marsden has built a career inside major franchises, but this project taps into something different. There is a looseness here, an unpredictability you do not often get in larger studio productions.
That same sense of personality carries through in Grabinski’s direction. His love for film is embedded throughout, not in a way that excludes audiences, but in a way that rewards them.
“I try to put as much of my personality into a movie as possible,” he said. “Just so it feels specific and doesn’t feel like a movie someone else would have made.”
The result is a film that feels deeply personal while still being wildly entertaining. It works whether you catch every reference or none at all.
As Grabinski put it, “The movie will still work if you’ve never seen anything I’ve seen before. But if you do, you might just get a little bit more out of it.”
And that is exactly what makes Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice stand out. In a landscape dominated by familiarity, it dares to be something else entirely.
