In the last few years, I’ve come to (re)appreciate Vince Vaughn’s work as a movie star. Maybe it’s due to some burgeoning nostalgia for the “Frat Pack” era of comedies, many of which Vaughn was prominently featured in: Old School, Starsky & Hutch, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, and Wedding Crashers. His sardonic sense of wisecracking humor allowed him to play the straight man role better than the rest of the members of the pack. I’ve also respected his later career choices, such as flipping the script and playing the chaos agent against Mel Gibson in the ultra-violent and dark-hearted Dragged Across Concrete.

Seemingly coming out at the right moment is Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, which, as the title suggests, with Vaughn playing the character of Nick, offers a double dose of the actor. That’s possible because this is a time-travel movie, another in an ever-growing recent line that includes Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, Totally Killer, The Adam Project, Palm Springs, and about one hundred other direct-to-VOD movies you’ve never heard of. Is the increasing popularization of this subgenre a symptom of the chaotic messiness of our current present and impending future? Could everything be fixed if we went back and did it differently? Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is not the film to answer those questions, with the futuristic technology mostly being used for hijinks and some surface-level ruminations on regret.

Ben Schwartz, an actor who has never played a competent character, appears as Symon (yes, that’s how it’s spelled). As you guessed it, he’s a total idiot. Well, not totally, because he did successfully build a time machine. He had to borrow money from Nick, who runs a typical mafia loan-sharking operation. When Nick comes to collect payment, he stumbles into the machine and goes back six months, creating the situation of “Present Nick” and “Future Nick.”

Present Nick is furious that his best friend/crime partner Mike (James Marsden) is hooking up with his wife Alice (Eiza González), a situation he uses to frame Mike for snitching to the police and have him killed. Future Nick regrets that decision, so he decides to use this opportunity as a way to make things right by saving Mike before Present Nick can do the deed. Also mixed in are the rest of the criminals, each played by Hollywood’s favorite idiot character actors like Jimmy Tatro, Arturo Casto, and Lewis Tan.

After two minutes on a chalkboard, this whole plot would probably crumble to pieces. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter, as writer/director BenDavid Grabinski’s only objective is for you to have a fun time. It’s something he really wants to accomplish, making everything feel a little forced. The millennial nostalgia soundtrack is cued from a cassette player, the frames slow down every time something “cool” happens, and the jokes are crammed with references out of a Tarantino joint. To borrow Peter Griffin’s infamous critique of The Godfather: It insists upon itself.

The central trio (or quartet?) is fun to hang out with. As one of the few people in the world who has seen Easy’s Waltz, a TIFF premiere back in September that has yet to resurface, and made the claim that Vaughn was some undiscovered musical talent, it was a bit more fun for this film to include a bit that correctly asserts that he is not blessed with golden pipes. I mean this with no disrespect, but this is a Hulu original, so it’s not like I was expecting high art. For something that is being released with the intention of watching it for “free” on the couch, it gets the job done.

20th Century Studios will release Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice on Hulu on March 27th.