by Jeff Alan, Contributing Writer
Ever wondered what it would be like to have the perfect friend to rat on for any trouble you get in? To pin the blame on for a small indiscretion you committed? Maybe you needed him to give you an excuse to not go to a social function. In the new comedy, Ricky Stanicky, the three male leads have that friend in the imaginary titular character. The scapegoat for all their misdeeds.
Ricky Stanicky follows Dean (Zac Efron), JT (Andrew Santino), and Wes (Jermaine Fowler) as kids, who accidentally set a neighbor’s house on fire and pin the crime on a fictional friend they dub Ricky Stanicky. After getting away with the crime, they start to adopt the fictional Ricky into their lives and put the blame on him for other things that they do wrong in their adolescence and beyond. Which brings the story to the present day, with all three leads in their 30s. They use this fake friend — for whom they’ve written an entire backstory over the last couple of decades, dubbed “The Bible,” which includes stories of Stanicky traveling through Africa helping homeless and less fortunate and being a testicular cancer survivor — to get out of JT’s baby shower so they can go to a concert in Atlantic City. They use Stanicky as an excuse once again, claiming Ricky’s cancer has returned, and he is in the hospital in Albany.
After successfully getting to Atlantic City and attending the show, they meet alcoholic, amateur actor, impersonator, and sexual-based song parody performer named “Rock Hard Rod” (John Cena). After experiencing just a fraction of his insanity and wild card nature, they bid him farewell and receive his business cards in case they have any acting or performance needs for him. After checking his phone, Dean sees there are numerous messages from his girlfriend, Erin (Lex Scott Davis), saying that JT’s wife, Susan (Anja Savcic), is going into early labor. All three men rush back home and get there after the baby is born.
After being settled at the hospital, they are grilled by their significant others and family members about where they were and why they didn’t answer their phones, claiming to have called every hospital in Albany, and that Ricky Stanicky did not exist. Wes almost comes clean about their elaborate decades-long lie, but Dean interjects, claiming that Ricky had lied to get them to Albany to celebrate five cancer-free years. Susan and her skeptical mother demand for Ricky to attend the baby’s Bris ceremony in the coming week so they can meet him, which triggers everyone else in the room to demand the same meeting as well.
Put in a tight corner, the three friends brainstorm what they can do to appease their partners and family, coming to the conclusion to hire an actor to play Ricky. Whose business card does Dean remember he has? None other than Rock Hard Ron, who is elated to step in the role and life as Ricky. But when he arrives, the floodgates of Ricky’s extraordinary — and fake — life come to the surface, and Dean, JT, and Wes do everything they can to make sure Rod stays in character.
Now, this film is not perfect. Far from it. It’s not an enlightened movie or one that will change your life. But that being said, it’s actually kind of fun! I am starting to really enjoy this phase of Cena’s career, where he plays characters who are just goofy and silly even for the story they’re in. He has a lot of really funny moments in this, and there’s something about seeing his buff physique in impersonations of famous rock and pop music icons that really made me laugh hard, along with changing the lyrics to classic songs just enough to make them about masturbation.
The rest of the cast is serviceable as well. Efron does his usual Efron thing by being the ringleader of a group of friends. Santino — who I am already a fan of, and was more or less the reason I gravitated toward the film — brings his signature dry sense of humor to his dialogue, and it works perfectly. Fowler is one who I don’t get to see much in movies, but he’s given a great opportunity to show is acting chops in this. And the rest of the supporting cast does perfectly fine.
As far as negatives go, the plot is pretty standard. If you’ve seen one character-lies-and-get-in-too-deep-in-the-lie type of movie, you’ve seen them all. It plays out almost exactly how you expect, and comes to a conclusion that is surprising yet inevitable. But outside of those issues, there isn’t much that holds this movie down.
A good comedic cast and some unexpected laughs will help a film for sure. A standard plot can hold a movie back, but in all honesty, as far as raunchy comedies with a formulaic plot, funny actors, and decent laughs, starring John Cena go, you could do a lot worse than this.
Rating: High Side of Just Okay
Ricky Stanicky is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video
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