‘Ricky Stanicky’ Movie Review: Farrelly Brother Comedy Is Dead On Arrival
Photo from Amazon Studios/MGM
From Jeremy Kibler
It seems like only two weeks ago that another duo of filmmaking brothers branched off for one of them to make a solo project. Peter Farrelly may have made two other movies (Green Book and The Greatest Beer Run Ever) without Bobby Farrelly, but Ricky Stanicky is clearly supposed to be his own return to the Farrelly Brothers’ comedic brand of smartly stupid and sweet. Without a memorable comic gag or an underlying sweetness that actually feels earned, Ricky Stanicky is an imbecilic, mean-spirited misfire that almost has the power to make you hate the human race.
Zac Efron, Andrew Santino, and Jermaine Fowler play Dean, JT, and Wes, childhood best friends who have seemingly never grown up. Whenever they pulled a prank (like lighting shit on fire on someone’s porch), they blamed it on “Ricky Stanicky,” their nonexistent fourth friend whom they made up on the fly. Even 25 years later, as these grown-ass men are in committed relationships and one of them is about to have their first child, they always have an alibi to get out of certain commitments. For instance, JT gets out of his own baby shower and hightails it to Atlantic City because Ricky’s cancer is back and he needs an emergency surgery in Albany. Naturally, as the wives (and a very suspicious mother-in-law) demand to finally meet Ricky, the trio hires “Rock Hard” Ron (John Cena), an alcoholic actor and one-man musical act of jerk-off jams. Do you think this fraud will become a hanger-on and not leave?
It’d be one thing if Ricky Stanicky was proudly R-rated and funny, but Peter Farrelly seems pretty presumptuous about the latter. It doesn’t help that the screenplay by Jeff Bushell and Brian Jarvis & James Lee Freeman & Peter Farrelly & Pete Jones & Mike Cerrone (that’s six, count ‘em, six writers) establishes Dean, JT, and Wes as three equally frustrating dumbasses. Of course, the characters’ constant refusal to accept any responsibility in their lives has to exist in order to make the premise work, but overlooking that doesn’t make these guys any easier to get on board with.
No fault of any of the actors, Efron’s Dean is alternately the least defined character (JT is Jewish and Wes is gay and unemployed) but does get moments of backstory involving an abusive father that feel very wedged-in. With the right material, Cena can be very funny, mostly because the built actor is so unassuming (and some of the juvenile lyrics as Hot Rod are admittedly amusing). He can’t help but be a little endearing at times even as this hanger-on fully commits to the fabled role of “Ricky Stanicky,” but the evolution that Rod takes feels phony solely because the script demands it. William H. Macy is very game in playing Dean and JT’s boss but gets saddled with making “air blowjobs” during his passionate speeches.
So much of the comedy in Ricky Stanicky is built on lies and aggravating character choices, and it takes this hapless trio’s entire web of deception to realize that they could lose everything. The viewer hopes they do. Just like the best Farrelly Brother comedies of yore, this one less successfully tries to have it both ways, reveling in the raunch but then bending over backwards to make characters have human feelings. It just doesn’t play here, and some of that might have been forgiven had the movie actually been funny and smart. The desperate excuses for gags involve a duck nearly drowning a dog, a drugged mohel bungling a baby’s bris, and a long-haired woman almost getting scalped by a bowling ball return. Hilarious!
When one takes a look at a new movie’s likable cast and the previously successful maker and wonders how bad it could be, it can always be Ricky Stanicky bad.
Rating: 1/5
Ricky Stanicky hits Amazon Video on March 7, 2024.
