Peter Farrelly’s Ricky Stanicky concerns a trio of best friends who create an imaginary person to blame for their misdeeds. As the years go by, Dean (Zac Efron), JT (Andrew Santino), and Wes (Jermaine Fowler) continue using “Ricky” as an excuse any time they want to skip, say, a family gathering or sneak out on a boys’ weekend. In such moments, they simply tell their significant others that Ricky really needs them right now.
That’s a solid enough setup for a film, a kind of coming-of-middle-age comedy in the vein of Jeff Tomsic’s Tag, where the characters’ commitment to a childhood tradition ends up jeopardizing their adult lives in the process. But where the antics of Tag’s characters effectively captured the stupid joy of acting like your younger self while hanging out with your oldest friends, Ricky Stanicky is stupid in a much less joyful way. Worse, it’s nowhere near as cohesive as that film.
Unsurprisingly, the tangled web that Dean, JT, and Wes have weaved soon threatens to entrap them. After JT accidentally misses the birth of his child while on a trip to see “Ricky,” the people around them start asking pointed questions about this mysterious friend that no one else has ever met, seen, or spoken to. Cornered and unable to face the consequences of revealing their decades-long deception, the guys decide to enlist an actor they met in Vegas to play the role of Ricky Stanicky and help them cover their tracks. Enter Rock Hard Rod (John Cena).
It’s here that we’re treated to a glimpse of Rod’s one-man show, during which he dresses up as pop stars ranging from Billy Idol to Brittany Spears and performs X-rated, Weird Al Yankovic-esque parodies of their biggest hits. It’s a not-great gag that Cena works incredibly hard to eke some laughs out of, and that’s pretty much how things go for the rest of Ricky Stanicky.
As a WWE superstar, Cena is a perfect casting choice for a larger-than-life character like the formerly imaginary Ricky. He rattles off jokes with the boundless energy of a man used to spending three nights a week catapulting himself across a ring, and he’s completely at ease as the absolute center of attention. The punchlines that he’s been handed are impossibly weak—a surprising number of them simply involve his character yelling out made-up sexual innuendos—but he strains every one of his comedic muscles to try and sell them all the same.
If anything, the three leads are even less well-served by the material. Santino’s caustic character comes off as simply unpleasant, like the friend of a friend you’re introduced to with a disclaimer about how “he seems like a dick but he’s actually a stand-up guy” only to find out that he is, in fact, just a dick. Fowler brings a hazy, whimsical vibe to Wes that’s actually pretty endearing, but he’s never given anything much to do. Efron’s character is caught in the middle as the film’s supposed protagonist and a man of no distinguishable characteristics whatsoever.
Late in its third act, Ricky Stanicky attempts to hit a more somber emotional beat by revealing something about Dean’s past that’s jarringly dark for a film whose goofiness is its default mode. Largely because this aspect of the character isn’t previously hinted at and is never alluded to again, the moment ends up feeling heavy-handed in the extreme—almost cynical in its attempt at injecting gravitas into a film that never even hints at wanting for such an injection.
As our main characters are embarking on the Ricky-centric journey that sets the film’s plot into motion, Wes asks his friends why they continue to go to all this effort rather than just telling their partners the truth. Men finding elaborate ways to avoid their wives might be a staple of boomer humor, but it doesn’t really make much sense if you actually like the person you’re with, as Dean, JT, and Wes all seem to. It’s a moment of self-awareness that seems like it might point the film toward something genuinely interesting, only for JT to snuff this potential out with a scornful remark while Dean sits between them, saying nothing in particular.
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