‘Ricky Stanicky’ tries and fails to be a raunchy comedy from a time gone by
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Make no mistake, films like “Ricky Stanicky” are not played in theaters anymore. The R-rated studio comedy genre faced an extreme decline over the past decade, with only two films grossing $100 million at the domestic box office from 2016-2019.
While there are surprise hits like 2023’s “No Hard Feelings,” raunchy, hardcore comedies will now only appear on a streaming service. Director Peter Farrelly’s “Ricky Stanicky,” available on Amazon Prime, tries to follow the footsteps of his classics like “Dumb and Dumber,” “There’s Something About Mary” and “Kingpin.”
At moments, the movie succeeds with some simple and uproarious sequences. But it equally suffers from a cookie-cutter structure that unnecessarily forces dramatic wounds on the main characters.
The film stars Zac Efron, Andrew Santino and Jermaine Fowler as three best friends who use an imaginary friend, “Ricky Stanicky,” to avoid obligations and escape trouble for years. As the lies become more suspicious and dubious, the friends hire an actor named Rod (John Cena) who sings sexual parodies of popular songs to morph into Ricky.
Cena, the former WWE superstar turned actor, has had semi-comedic performances before, like his role in “The Suicide Squad” and his cameo in “Barbie.” But he really transforms himself into a raunchy performer for this film. Through his various costume changes and sexual songs, Cena is undoubtedly the funniest part of the movie.
In the movie’s more eccentric scenes, like when JT’s (Santino) baby is getting circumcised, Cena is right there to save the day and nail the punchline. It’s a remarkable transformation for a man who once was a macho wrestler and action star. In “Ricky Stanicky,” Cena shows off a softer personality that is downright hilarious at times.
The script, which went through various rewrites for more than 15 years, gives Cena the chance to be a comedy star. The film’s jokes feel a little timid at times, but are still willing to push the needle compared to “Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain,” another recent streaming comedy.
The structure of the screenplay, officially credited to six different writers, follows the three-act structure almost perfectly and would be an ideal candidate to be shown in a Screenwriting 101 course in film school.
There is a boatload of traditional story beats in the screenplay, like the inciting incident — the boys hiring Rod after family members grew suspicious — or the obstacle at the end of act two — Dean’s (Efron) girlfriend Erin (Lex Scott Davis) finding out the truth about Ricky.
But while the simple structure may sometimes be an advantage for comedy, it falls down a familiar rabbit hole of requiring a wound for the main character, Dean. Throughout the film, there are breadcrumbs to a deeper psychological issue as to why Dean feels like he must create an imaginary friend to get away with stuff.
The film adds a level of melodrama and trauma to Efron’s character. For being a laugh-out-loud comedy that was promoted as “R-rated,” the sudden turn feels jumbled at best.
While adding a sense of seriousness is already a bad idea, the execution is worse. Dean’s past of abuse is only referred to off-handedly for the majority of the film’s runtime. There’s no real examination of Dean’s psychology.
This criticism of a streaming comedy may feel unnecessary. But then again, having a backstory in a comedy like this is as well. “No Hard Feelings” does feature some irrelevant melodrama, but mainly sticks to being a sex comedy that doesn’t have to be bogged down by its own self-seriousness.
That’s what keeps “Ricky Stanicky” at a distance from other comedies it so desperately tries to emulate. The film is trapped between different eras of popular culture.
By being stuck in a time where the “trauma plot” trope is used now more than ever in film and television, “Ricky Stanicky” ultimately fails at being what it set out to be. There’s no doubt that you will laugh at plenty of the scenes featuring Cena and Efron having half-decent comedic chemistry. But with the film trying to tell a semi-dramatic story, it is unable to be as outrageously funny as the movies that no longer receive a theatrical release.
