Mid-Budget, R-Rated, Funny Ricky Stanicky Won’t Save the Studio Comedy
Green Book filmmaker Peter Farrelly continues on his solo directing spree following a Coen Brothers-like split from his filmmaking partner and brother Bobby nearly a decade ago. In their separate endeavors, the brothers who brought us such enduring classics as There’s Something About Mary and Hall Pass (sincere) have continued to pursue comedy to mixed results. Bobby Farrelly’s good-natured if not particularly laugh-out-loud Champions of just a year ago, and Peter’s The Greatest Beer Run Ever from two years ago, which was received poorly and quickly memory-holed after debuting on Apple TV+. Still calmly charting the comedy waters alone and curiously not intent to pursue more Oscar-winning social commentary, Peter reunites with Beer Run star Zac Efron for Ricky Stanicky, a humble, mid-budget studio comedy. It’s under two hours, with a lot of really funny jokes that actually made me laugh. Are mid-budget studio comedies that make people laugh, true unicorns in the cinematic landscape of 2024, truly enjoying a belabored if much-desired return?
Well, if Ricky Stanicky has anything to do with it, likely not: Distributed by Amazon MGM Studios via Amazon Prime, Ricky Stanicky, which would probably do well in a crowd (as it did at the world premiere I attended in Times Square on Tuesday night) will not be granted any theatrical release. Instead, the film falls into its box on the streaming carousel like a dead body ushered into its coffin and lowered six feet down into the earth.
The ever-eager John Cena stars as Rock Hard Rod, the stage name for an X-rated cover artist who turns pop rock classics into odes about masturbation. Rod is plucked from an Atlantic City casino following one night meeting lifelong friends Dean (Zac Efron), JT (Andrew Santino), and Wes (Jermaine Fowler). After returning from their duplicitous trip to the sudden birth of JT’s baby, the trio needs to enlist the help of an actor to play the fake friend who’s been getting them out of unwanted situations their entire lives—and got them to a last-minute concert in Atlantic City instead of JT’s baby shower. You see, “Ricky Stanicky” is only a real person to those Dean, JT and Wes needed to deceive over the past 20 years; he’s a “get out of jail free” card in the form of an unseen, hard-working humanitarian who’s been afflicted with cancer multiple times.
Though the men manage a vague Instagram page for Ricky that seems to have everyone fooled, it’s when JT misses the birth of his child that the claws start tightening on the guys. Unless Ricky Stanicky can make an appearance at JT’s new child’s upcoming bris, the jig will finally be up.
But the friends are not willing to let go of their façade just yet, and with the memory of the strange, muscular man who attempted to mooch off them at the casino bar, Dean calls Rod up with a real part for him to play. Nervous as to whether this unstable deadbeat—who’s suffering physically from alcohol withdrawal before their very eyes—will even be up to the task of embodying an alternate persona, Rod exceeds all expectations as Ricky, which is where most of the humor in Ricky Stanicky comes from.
Ricky Stanicky was always the guy who could do it all—at least, for Wes, Dean and JT. But now Rod’s version of Ricky really can do it all, and to comedic effect. As Ricky Stanicky, Rod is near-infallible to every inquiring person he comes across at the bris, thanks in part to Rod’s studious scrutiny of the guys’ “Ricky Stanicky Bible,” amassed with decades’ worth of character development for Ricky. For as much of a lowlife as Rod is, he’s an incredibly hard worker and unwilling to put forth the bare minimum. Case in point: When the mohel (Jeff Ross) gets accidentally drugged on ketamine, Rod steps in with Ricky’s “experience doing adult circumcisions in Africa.”
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