Ricky Stanicky: What is Stan Grant doing in this mess of a movie?
It’s hard to believe the former ABC presenter/journalist read the script before agreeing to appear in Ricky Stanicky, a film shot in Melbourne that’s about as much fun as losing a limb.
Did Stan Grant read the Ricky Stanicky script before signing on to the film?
It’s hard to believe the former ABC presenter cast his eyes over this slop — which throws together the most miserably outdated jokes about masturbation and boners — and thought, “Yes, this is a good move for me.” Yet here we are.
Ricky Stanicky is the new R-rated Amazon comedy from gross-out veteran Peter Farrelly (There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber, Shallow Hal). The very same Peter Farrelly who, in 2018, took home the Best Picture trophy at the Oscars for Green Book. It now looks as if his foray into making dramedies that pretend to care about racial inequality was just a phase. It’s back to the regular programming of Farrelly dumping his load of semen jokes upon us.
The Ricky Stanicky of this film is an imaginary character dreamt up by three childhood best friends: Dean (Zac Efron), JT (Andrew Santino), and Wes (Jermaine Fowler). When we meet them on Halloween night in 1999, they’re kids up to no good. Just to give you a sense of the kind of humour you’re going to be bludgeoned with for the next nearly two hours: one of the kids is dressed up as “a dog with a boner” — and it won’t be the last dog with a boner joke.
When the boys accidentally set on fire a house, which they only intended to cover with dog poo, one of them comes up with a cover for their crime. To throw the cops off their scent, they leave a jacket behind, with the name “Ricky Stanicky” written on the lapel. And because we are supposed to believe that every single person in this film is a moron, it works. Enter Ricky Stanicky, their new imaginary BFF.
Twenty years later, the guys are now in their thirties, living in Providence, Rhode Island (actually filmed in Melbourne). Ricky is still with them, now with an elaborate lore. The guys have told their significant others that Ricky is a good Samaritan who spends his time helping starving children in Nairobi. He returns to the States only occasionally, when the gang needs an excuse to ditch their partners for a boys’ trip. In this film’s logic, girlfriends are such nagging divas that one cannot simply ask if they can play golf — they need to use an altruistic imaginary mate who is undergoing surgery for testicular cancer as a ploy. This might have something to do with the fact all six of the screenwriters are men. So, the girlfriends are none the wiser that Ricky does not exist, despite the fact Dean’s girlfriend, Erin, is an aspiring news reporter (everyone in this film is gallingly dimwitted, remember?)
One of these Ricky ruse trips sees the boys conspire to ditch JT’s heavily pregnant wife Susan’s (Anja Savcic) baby shower and fly to Atlantic City for … a Marc Rebillet concert. Sure, whatever, he’s probably not the kind of artist you’d ditch your own baby shower for, but let’s not dwell on it. (A side note: the soundtrack is weirdly amazing.)
At the bar, the guys meet a dude named Rod Rimestead (John Cena), a failed actor turned “South Jersey’s premiere X-rated rock and roll impersonator,” who now sings “wall to wall, top to bottom, jizz jams” at local dive bars, after his live dog-on-dog sex shows were cancelled because “Atlantic City went all woke.”
It must be said that Cena absolutely kills it in this movie. The scenes of him performing, dressed in drag, at his spunk-themed revue are genuinely funny. It’s impossible not to laugh at this jacked-to-hell former WWE star dressed as Billy Idol singing “It’s a nice day for some wood wacking / it’s a nice day to jizz again.”
Anyway, the gang accidentally miss the birth of JT’s son. Susan and his mother-in-law are both fuming and begin to doubt that Ricky exists at all. Instead of admitting to the lie, Dean has the bright idea of hiring an actor to play Ricky, and what better man for the job than Rod Rimestead? That’s the film’s premise. Rod the sexed-up, alcoholic reinventing himself as righteous Ricky, and fully integrates himself into the trio’s lives.
At this point we’re only 20 minutes into the movie, and it’s about as much fun as losing a limb. There is still another hour-and-a-half of undercooked gags to get through, which include, but are not limited to: a 30-minute sequence in which a rabbi accidentally doses on ketamine; Cena performing a circumcision at the baby bris with a cigar cutter; and a woman, referred to as “Cousin It” getting her bum-length hair stuck in a ball retrieval machine at a bowling alley.
Rod is so good at being Ricky that he ends up winning over Dean and JT’s boss (William H Macy) and scoring a plum job at their finance company. Which somehow (at this point you stop asking questions) leads to him getting interviewed by Stan Grant, who is essentially playing a version of himself, as the host of a human interest news segment called “Hero’s Story.” It’s a bizarre cameo that doubles as the films most emotional, earnest scene — to diminishing returns.
There are so many problems with this film, the foremost being the inherent unlikeability of its central trio. Efron, who delivered a mesmerising performance in last year’s wrestling drama The Iron Claw and typically brings an allure to everything he does, appears totally despondent here. Who could blame him when he has Santino, a charisma void, as a scene partner? Fowler doesn’t fare much better, but his Wes is the most thinly sketched-out character of the lot (excluding every female character).
The best part of this otherwise dire movie is Cena, who is totally committed and uninhibited in this role, and proves to be a fine comic actor. By the end of the film you end up feeling utterly depressed that he wasn’t given better material to work with. One can only hope a better script comes his way.
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