"Mike and Nick and so on": Time traveling gangsters, a cannibal assassin, a gay party, Jimmy Tatro, and Arturo's d*ck

    

Hulu recommended a movie with a title so stylized that I couldn't decipher it, but the icon featured two guys, and I don't have enough movie reviews here, so I clicked on "play."  It's Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (2026).

Scene 1: A Wacky Scientist (Ben Schwartz) working in a room full of old-fashioned desktop computers and dot-matrix printers.  The quantum stabilizers are engaged, so he wolf-howls with joy and sings a rap song about being the greatest person on Earth (but really, aren't all rap songs saying that?).   Continuing his song, he heads to the chalkboard and finishes his equation.  

Uh-oh, the portal starts to glow, and a figure appears.  Wacky Scientist pulls a gun to defend himself, and accidentally shoots himself, and sets the lab on fire.  Must be him from the future.

Scene 2: A lot of people yelling "Welcome back, Jimmy (Keith David)!" at a party celebrating his release from prison after 6 years.  

Wait -- Jimmy, played by Jimmy Tatro, is standing off to the side.  Everyone is cheering his Crime Lord Dad.  Director: why have the guest of honor off to the side, while everyone cheers his father? Do you have any idea how confusing that is?

Jimmy takes center stage and yells "Get loose, biatch!", whereupon everyone applauds, and a cute Short Guy yells "Awright!"  They must be responding to his catch phrase?

Crime boss Dad notes that someone in this room is responsible for Jimmy going to prison, and he'll be dealt with tonight.  But for now, have fun.

Scene 3:  A Sleazoid, standing at the bar, gets flirted with by a lady, while a Posh Guy glares at him; three ladies smooze; the Short Guy flirts with a sleeveless Muscle Hunk, then walks off with him.  A hookup!

I checked the cast list:

Slezoid: Mike (James Marsden)

Posh Guy: Nick (Vince Vaughn)

Short Guy: Dumbass Tony (Arturo Castro, left) 

Muscle Hunk: Roid Rage Ryan (Lewis Tan, top photo.).

Posh Guy is glaring because the lady flirting with the Sleazoid happens to be his wife, Alice.  She asks if he's going to the after-after-after party.  He's not, because he hates her, so she turns her attention back to the Sleazoid.

Scene 4:  Sleazoid, with flowers and wine, walks through dim blue-lit hallways.  It looks like a gay club, but it's actually a regular hallway in this hotel (crazy!), leading to a regular (albeit extremely dim) suite.  He calls Posh Guy's Wife to tell her that he left a key at the front desk for their hookup.  

There's a knock on the door.  "Holy shit!" Sleazoid exclaims.  It's Posh Guy -- did he catch on that Sleazoid is cheating with his wife?  "I know you're in there!!! Open up!!!"

Sleazoid texts the Wife.  "Don't let him in!  If he knows about us, he'll kill you!"  

Turns out that Sleazoid is an enforcer, breaking legs and murdering people, and Posh Guy has a job for him: "it might get heavy and weird."   

"But I wanted to go to Jimmy's after-after-after party."

"Nope, this is too important."

"I'm planning to leave the business, so no killing. But I'll beat someone up for you."

Scene 5: They drive to Posh Guy's house.  He tells Sleazoid to take some chloroform and knock out the person who answers the door, no matter who it is.  

Left: Arturo Castro's backside  I didn't have enough to make a full profile, but you're going to get his d*ck before this review ends.

The door is answered by: Posh Guy himself!  Wearing another outfit.

The chloroform doesn't work. They fight.  There's fireplace pokers, photos of wives, aquariums, and a trophy, and finally Posh Guy is killed.  

Scene 6: Our Posh Guy arrives, and is not happy to find the house destroyed and the Other Posh Guy dead.  Plus  "The Crime Boss will be here soon, and he can't see you."   

They clean up just in time for Sleazoid to hide.

Crime Boss arrives, and tells Posh Guy that he knows who ratted out his son Jimmy to "those pig c*ks*ckers."  Homophobic slur, in 2026!  I am disgusted.  You get one more before I'm outta here.

More after the break. 

Oliver Sawell: A Surrey boy plays two gay guys, posts a shirtless Spiderman, and throws it. With three nude co-stars

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Jonathan Taylor Thomas: The teen idol superstar plays gay characters, retires from acting before he can show us his dick. Probably.

 

During the early 1990s, ABC offered a "family-friendly" lineup on Wednesday nights, beginning with The Wonder Years, with Fred Savage courting the Girl of His Dreams in the 1960s.  We sang a parody of the theme song, the Beatle's "With a Little Help from My Friends":

What would you do if I shat on your shoes?
Would you get up and kick me to the moon?

Before turning the channel to CBS, with The Nanny and Melrose Place.

But we knew about each of the shows, because you knew about every show in the era. They included:

Doogie Houser, with Neil Patrick Harris (right, recent photo) as a 13 year old doctor named Doogie.

Coach, with Craig T. Nelson as a coach.

And Home Improvement, with Tim Allen as a grunting, sweating macho man who hosts a tool-themed tv series and tries to instill grunting, sweating masculinity into his three sons.  Zachery Ty Bryant (playing Brad), the eldest and most muscular, was promoted as a teen idol to draw in teenage girls (they weren't aware of gay boys).  But oddly, it was Jonathan Taylor Thomas (playing Randy) who took off, causing millions of teenage and preteen girls to tune it (again, no gay boys exist).  It quickly jumped to #2 in the ratings.

Wait -- Brad is a jock, a football star, a letterman who every girl in the school swoons over.  Randy is soft, bookish, somewhat femme, playing "a fairy" in the school play, an aspiring actor and journalist.  How did Jonathan Taylor Thomas do it?

The showrunners were stumped. They should have realized that straight girls and gay boys just starting to recognize their romantic interests prefer soft, cuddly, and relatable: Malcolm, not Reese (Malcolm in the Middle), Chris, not Drew (Everybody Hates Chris); Adam, not Barry (The Goldbergs). 

In the mid-1990s, Home Improvement moved to Tuesdays, in the hope that its popularity would help stragglers like Spin City.  We still steered clear of the grunting, sweating Tim Allen, quickly changing the channel to Frasier (CBS) and then back for Drew Carey (ABC).    

But we could hardly ignore JTT; he was on every magazine cover, in every talk show.

He presented at the Emmies and the Golden Globes.

We saw him waving in Thanksgiving and Christmas parades

He appeared in specials honoring Tom Cruise and Lauren Hutton

He praised James Bond in a documentary about the super-spy.

Elton John hugged him.

He played Tom Sawyer opposite Devon Sawa's Huckleberry Finn in Tom and Huck (1995), with a story only vaguely related to the original novels.

An adventure boy opposite Devon Sawa and Scott Bairstow (left) in Wild America (1997).

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Graham Martillo: Ritzy private school boy plays lacrosse, hugs his boyfriend, takes his shirt off, buys a Porsche. With nude Newport dudes

  

I think Instagram recommends pages based purely on beefcake photos.  One of these guys is a civilian named Graham, RI AOF.  I don't post the real last names of non-actors, so he'll be Graham Martillo ("hammer" in Spanish).

Graham is the cute one on the right, in a pink suit with a blue tie.  The guy in the blue suit with the pink tie may be his boyfriend.  Is this a real date, or staged for fun?

Graham has a rather thorough biography available online.  Granddad was an artist, and dad is an architect in Newport, Rhode Island. He attended St. Philomena , a ritzy Catholic grammar school, and then St. George's, an even ritzier private boarding school.  He graduates in 2026 or 2027, depending on which profile you believe.

I like how they pose in front of the Church of St. George, an incredible Gothic Revival chapel, as if it's no big deal, just the background of their lives.

Graham plays football and lacrosse for the Fighting Clams, and works as a caddy at the Newport Country Club, where the super-wealthy come to play.

Left: Since I'm not sure about Graham's age, I didn't check for nude photos, but here's another guy from Newport.

I assume that Graham is gay based on the many guy-hugging photos and absence of girls.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit