
Nick is desperate, holed up in a cheap hotel, suffering from an ulcer and convinced that a local mobster wants him killed. He calls Mikey, his friend since childhood, but when Mikey arrives, Nick won't let him in: his moods swing. So begins a long night as Mike tries to take care of Nick, calm him down and get him out of town. Their sojourn - on foot and in a city bus - takes them to a bar, a club, toward a movie theater, to the cemetery where Nick's mom is buried, and to Nic... (Full plot summary below)
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Nick is desperate, holed up in a cheap hotel, suffering from an ulcer and convinced that a local mobster wants him killed. He calls Mikey, his friend since childhood, but when Mikey arrives, Nick won't let him in: his moods swing. So begins a long night as Mike tries to take care of Nick, calm him down and get him out of town. Their sojourn - on foot and in a city bus - takes them to a bar, a club, toward a movie theater, to the cemetery where Nick's mom is buried, and to Nick's girlfriend's apartment. Tempers fray and the friendship is tested. Meanwhile, a hit man who's getting information from someone is indeed looking for Nick.
Leave your thoughts about Mikey and Nicky.
| San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOne of the most innovative, engaging, and insightful films of that turbulent era of American moviemaking. |
| GuardianPeter BradshawA neglected 1976 gem from a neglected Hollywood genius. May was known for her comedy but here proves absolutely fluent in the language of mobster lowlife, with an edge of caustic, disillusioned humour, and strange yet shockingly real outbursts of violence in which cafe owners and bus drivers are suddenly roughed up. |
| Paste MagazineAndy CrumpStrip Mikey and Nicky of its genre particulars, its gangster trappings, and what remains is a recognizable story of two friends at loggerheads. |
| Slant MagazineChuck BowenFew films have so exquisitely captured how straight American men reveal their affections and insecurities to one another, as well as how they’re both threatened and awed by each other. |
| Chicago TribuneGene SiskelMay’s judgment on manhood is harsh: it entails renunciation, submission, humiliation, and the willingness to betray and to break the relationships forged in the heat of male bonding. Or, to be a man, one must stop being one of the guys. |
| Filmcritic.comJake Eukerthe film has matured very nicely, even though its protagonists never will |
| Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenMikey & Nicky is commonly, and unfairly, categorized as a John Cassavetes knock-off, which diminishes the originality of Elaine May's screenplay and this character study she crafted especially for co-stars Cassavetes and Peter Falk. She unleashes the darkest, most mercurial side of Cassavetes, and in Falk finds the actor's moral ambiguity that had been obscured as a result of his then-popular run as TV's Columbo. |
| LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenClearly May is invested in the material — she wrote it — and deserves credit for creating a fruitfully improvisational atmosphere. Yet she doesn’t leave a very distinct signature here, such as the social satire she brought to A New Leaf and The Heartbreak Kid. |
| The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayMikey & Nicky is sometimes dull and sometimes confusing—and it's both at once in the first 10 minutes, when Cassavetes is semi-comatose in a hotel room—but it also features plenty of absurd-but-believable human behavior. |
| Blogcritics.orgAlan DaleConsidering the gross overextension of the shoot and the indulgence of the actors, ... it makes perfect sense that the movie feels like the result of a game of 52 pick-up rather than the realization of a design. |