Peter Farrelly returns to his roots, more or less, with a gross-out comedy about men who behave like children Ricky Stanicky (now on Amazon Prime Video). And I say “sort of” because although the writer-director made a few movies without his brother Bobby Farrelly, this is the first time Peter has gone the raunchy route without him. Peter’s solo outings, Green Book (schlock that won an Oscar, to the chagrin of many) and The greatest beer race of all time (poignant, forgettable) deviated from his classic Dumb and dumb/Cornerstone/there’s something about mary reputation for blecchout comedy, replacing kick-in-the-nuts and bodily fluid jokes with sentimental treats. Stanicky finds Peter meeting his beer racener Zac Efron, who stars opposite wrestler-turned-movie star John Cena, and while the movie isn’t great, it’s definitely fun, fun in a ha-ha way, and fun in that it may have finally pushed us over the edge and turned us into Efron and Cena fans, quite improbably. Go figure.
RICKY STANICKY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: Twenty-five years ago. Hallowe’en. Three kids made a prank and almost burned down someone’s house. On the spot and in desperation, they blamed a fictional concoction by a non-human being named Ricky Stanicky. and that shit job. The police couldn’t find any record of Ricky Stanicky and apparently ignored him and everyone went on with their lives, more or less. Today, those three kids – Dean (Efron), JT (Andrew Santino) and Wes (Jermaine Fowler) – are adults whose psychological selves are still frozen in the psychological amber of 1999. See, Ricky Stanicky still “exists” in the sense that he is the scapegoat for all his mischief. Example: To avoid attending a baby shower for JT’s wife, they make up a story that their childhood friend Ricky’s testicular cancer has returned and they need to go see him. Then they take a plane to Atlantic City to see a shitty DJ play a dumb concert, get all their stories straight, and write them down in Ricky Stanicky’s “bible” so they have airtight stories when their SOs inevitably pepper them with questions. They even have an exclusive Ricky Stanicky phone with a fake Insta account and everything. THE PERFECT CRIME.
However, it turns out that the trip to Atlantic City was fateful. Fateful as hell: there they meet Rock Hard Rod (Cena), a desperate alcoholic and aspiring actor who works as a one-man cover band playing X parodies of rock ‘n’ roll hits at the Slot Swamp Casino. . “When a boner arises, you gotta control it,” he sings while wearing a Devo outfit. Good tone! Dean, JT, and Wes barely chase Rod away when JT gets the call that the baby is due six weeks early, so they return to Rhode Island just in time to miss the birth. Oops. Stanicky’s ruse gets its usual barrage of questions, especially from JT’s mother-in-law because, you know, mothers in law, good? – but they stick together through the sad story of testicular cancer that spread to the anus, and they barely survive.
Ugh, I’m telling you, ugh. But! No one at home has met this Ricky, and he absolutely HAS to be invited to the baby shower! Now, I’m sure the irony of a man with a missing nut coming to see the tip of a baby’s penis cut off is not lost on you, no sir. That’s the Farrelly style, you know? So they hire Rock Hard Rod to play Ricky Stanicky, which should be a recipe for disaster, as he comes off the plane looking like one of those hairless cats dipped in a fresh coat of honey glaze. That’s what three days of abstinence can do to a withdrawing alcoholic. But he appears in the bris and Bush. That shitty mother-in-law? Put her in her damn place, boy, hello. Even Evan and JT’s boss, Ted Summerhayes (William H. Macy), is impressed, and Evan’s frustrated journalist wife, Erin (Lex Scott Davis), gets a much-needed break when she successfully pitches a television article about the Ricky’s absolutely legendary and also non-existent life. non-profit work abroad, helping poverty-stricken people not die, and all that. Will this fine ruse withstand the hurricane-force wind of circumstances? Probably not. Prepare for impact!
What movies will it remind you of?: Stanicky seems to be the pinnacle of Batshit Cena, who takes the crazy personality he cultivated in the trash as friends on vacation and daddy’s house 2 and takes advantage of Farrellisms selected from the best of his filmography.
Performance worth seeing: Well, technically The iron claw marked my official transition into the Efron fandom, because in Stanicky, he’s basically the straight guy. That opens the door for Cena to go all out, and although the sloppy script prevents him from winning the top prize, he still wins reasonably a lot and is still the best in some pretty bad movies, although in this particular bad movie, In fact , might be good enough to make me recommend it.
Memorable dialogue: Summerhayes: “A circumcision party is my place when I need to relax.”
Sex and skin: How we got through a Farrelly blecchout without seeing some poor guy’s bird and eggs trapped in a vise or something seems like a miracle. No, all the sexual stuff here is purely verbal.
Our opinion: Evidence that Farrelly has grown up a bit: the plot introduces a love interest for Rod-slash-Ricky, which I was absolutely sure would lead to a crude joke about “Ricky” supposedly missing a testicle while Rod doesn’t. a testicle is missing. , but Oh. I’d say Farrelly left that joke hanging, but I have more class than that. This blatant failure to follow through on such a setup shows either a who-cares level of carelessness or a burgeoning maturity, or both, as the case may be, as the two notions dovetail into a slippery, sloppy situation. I of an ending that simply fades away, delivering impotent sentimentality and without decent punchlines (and it seems to me an unfortunate compromise between the six in the script, count them, six writers, with two additional “story by” credits.
However, apparently all of those writers contributed a few jokes each, because against all odds and common sense, Ricky Stanicky is a reasonably functional comedy driven by a Dinner in Red. The man is on fire here, wham-bam with his timing and showing a comically “psychotic” edge to his character that you wish would be exploited for some darker comedy (which, frankly, I don’t think Farrelly is anymore). game). The script features some fried one-liners, the always-funny Macy is up for some crass absurdity, Santino gets an angry exhortation or three, Jeffrey Ross appears as a serial pun-making rabbi, etc. Efron is a little lost here, and you won’t give a shit about his character’s seemingly slightly troubled marriage or any of the character’s lackluster parts here, but the laughs, as always, go a long way toward smoothing out some of the script.” . ™s biggest pots.
In fact, there are enough jokes to start questioning reality a little. And that reality is a somewhat remarkable confluence of events: Cena is at the peak of his comedic powers, the premise is at least a slightly new variation on arrested development junkola, and the world has been dealing with such a stark shortage of R – rated comedies in recent years, you’ll turn on an idiotic movie like this and find yourself thirsting for Farrelly-style OTT grossness, even in its slightly weakened late-period form. It targets the sensibilities of Gen X elders who crave some comedy in today’s pre-post-PC context, whatever that may be. no one is going to accuse Ricky Stanicky of being great, or more than modestly inspired, but I ended up laughing despite myself, and that has significant value.
Our call: Is Farrelly past his prime? Yes maybe. But he’s smart enough to get Cena to deal with the nitty-gritty of making a mediocre yukfest fun enough to warrant a recommendation. TRANSMIT IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic living in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
