Ricky Stanicky

Ricky Stanicky was watched early as a screener. It comes out on Amazon Prime on Friday, March 8th.

Dean (Zac Efron), JT (Andrew Santino), and Wes (Jermaine Fowler), are best friends, and have been since they were little kids. You know, when they went to burn some dog shit on someone’s porch on Halloween. It was a mistake, and they were almost caught! But thankfully a fake name was written on the clothing, Ricky Stanicky, and the whole thing could be blamed on this other kid, who lived in another town.

Flash forward to many years later, and they’ve been blaming things on Ricky for decades now. It lets them hang out, go on trips, all with the excuse of Ricky, while avoiding their real responsibilities. You know. FAMILY. DATING. FAMILY. JOBS. Yuck.

But eventually their lies have caught up with them. And they need to produce Ricky, or else everything will crumble around them. So of course they hire some guy, Rod (John Cena), who sings covers of songs and turns them all into masturbation jokes, to play Ricky. Nothing will go wrong!

Also starring Anja Savcic, Jane Badler, Lex Scott Davis, and William H. Macy!

The cowboy hat is how you know he likes to party. And the screaming. Ah yes, a comedy based on characters lying. Do you want to know how it ends? Come on, do you?

Well, you already know how it ends. We all already know how it ends. It ends the same way all of these comedy films based on lies end. The people get found out, and admit it, and get a hard lesson. Sometimes that hard lesson is a life set for loneliness, like in Dear Evan Hansen. Sometimes they get everything they wanted despite the lie, because lessons learned. And none of them really feel like they are worth the after school special lesson.

The only thing that could save Ricky Stanicky, would be its humor and being funny throughout. But my goodness, did I not chuckle. It barely was a bleep on my radar. Over the top John Cena, does over the top things, and people have a good time because of it.

Honestly, this friend group had such low chemistry? All three of them. They did not mesh well. And this is not some strange situation where “Efron was good, the rest did not follow,” because no, Efron was also not good. He was probably in his least charismatic role I have ever seen him. I cared not for any of their characters, and that made this movie harder to sit through.

This is a straight to the internet comedy for a reason. And that reason is, because you have already seen it.

 

1 out of 4.