Ricky Stanicky review: Not even John Cena can carry this tiring comedy

Ricky Stanicky will go down as a rare blemish in John Cena’s recent run of otherwise enjoyable film and TV roles. Despite a valiant attempt to salvage the Amazon Original on his part, it fails on almost every level.

The elevator pitch for Ricky Stanicky has all the hallmarks of a potential banger in R-rated comedy. So it’s low praise when I say that the funniest part about this movie is John Cena creating an OnlyFans to market it.

To have the wrestler-turned-actor come off a stint in the action-packed and comedically superior Argylle only to land in this half-hearted Amazon Prime exclusive is a bit of a gut punch. Particularly given that Cena is the only one doing any heavy lifting on and off the screen.

Ricky Stanicky is full of flat jokes, weak writing, and forgettable characters. To top that off, what little message there is can be boiled down to something most people learned before they hit preschool: lying is bad.

“To Ricky Stanicky, the best friend we never had”

The film centers around childhood friends Dean (Zac Efron), JT (Andrew Santino), and Wes (Jermaine Fowler). When a Halloween prank goes awry, the boys invent a scapegoat by the name of Ricky Stanicky who they use into adulthood to avoid any responsibility or inconvenience that comes their way.

Stanicky is mainly used as a device by the trio to avoid spending time with their partners in favor of activities like golfing or concerts. Any time something undesirable comes up, the usually philanthropic Ricky has a relapse or develops testicular cancer.

When one of their lies goes too far, the trio is forced to hire someone to play the titular Stanicky in real life. Their choice is a down-on-his-luck singer named Rock-Hard Ron (John Cena) who pens explicit parody songs.

Things take a turn when Ron goes a little beyond his mandate of proving Stanicky’s existence and refuses to exit the lives of Dean, JT, and Wes. It turns out that playing a good person is more fulfilling than being a bad one.

John Cena carries this movie like he’s giving it the Attitude Adjustment

From the moment you see the hastily-animated opening sequence that repeatedly slaps you in the face with the film’s premise, you can tell how little effort went into this movie. It’s the first major red flag.

In a film called Ricky Stanicky, you expect the man playing the title character to be a standout but not to this degree. Zac Efron gives a phoned-in performance and despite being a career comedian, Santino’s portrayal of JT is somehow the least funny aspect of the movie.

All of the side characters feel poorly fleshed out, bland, and soulless to the point where without the aid of notes, you’re likely to forget their names. None of them do anything to add to the film’s attempts at comedy which mostly boils down to a few swearwords here and there.

This leaves John Cena out to dry and doing what he can to elevate an admittedly weak script. While he does manage to elicit a laugh every now and then, they are so infrequent that their absence distracts you as you watch.

A Stanicky situation

With Cena being the standout performance, it’s amazing how long it takes Writer/Director Peter Farrelly to entwine him with the other characters. Aside from a brief and comedically flat meeting earlier, the ensemble cast doesn’t fully form until over 30 minutes into the movie’s nearly two-hour run time.

Prior to this point, even the more absurdist comedy of Cena dressed as Britney Spears and licking whiskey off the ground in an alley failed to elicit any feeling in me because I kept waiting for the movie to start. It doesn’t improve much from there either.

The legitimate stakes of hiring Rod to play Ricky Stanicky aren’t introduced until more than an hour in. While the situation does allow for Cena to up the hilarity somewhat, it’s a massive slog to get to this point.

To make matters worse, the hastily slapped-together ending sees characters we have no reason to care about, and who have done nothing to redeem themselves, skate through the entire experience almost completely unscathed. A group of people comfortable with lying about serious physical and mental illnesses like alcoholism, drug addiction, and cancer, do nothing to earn their happy ending.

Amazon

It’s not your fault John. You tried so hard.

Ricky Stanicky is ultimately an exercise in patience that sees you twiddling your thumbs until the next joke mercifully lands, if one does at all. I laughed fewer times than I could count on my hands and found myself relieved when it was finally over.

Ricky Stanicky review score: 2/5

John Cena is the only bright spot in a flaccid attempt to imitate the blockbuster comedies from the turn of the last decade. They say humor is subjective but I feel I can confidently warn you, this movie just isn’t funny.