John Cena Commits To The Bit In This Outrageous Buddy Comedy

Ricky Stanicky starts with a flashback, as childhood friends Dean (Zac Efron), Wes (Jermaine Fowler), and JT (Andrew Santino) narrowly avoid trouble after a prank gone wrong results in a house fire. Knowing that they’re dead to rights, they make up an elaborate story about their friend, “Ricky Stanicky,” who eventually becomes the fall guy and scapegoat whenever they find themselves in a jam and need to lie their way out of it. Referring to the titular fictional character as “the best friend they never had,” the three boys make it well into adulthood using Ricky as their go-to excuse for getting out of various work and family obligations.

In order to maintain the web of lies they’ve been constructing for decades, they have a playbook that they refer to as their Bible, which they update every time they throw the imaginary Ricky Stanicky under the bus.

The lying trio realizes that everything is about to fall apart after skipping out on JT’s baby shower under the guise of Ricky Stanicky having a cancer scare, when they’re really going to a Marc Rebillet concert in Atlantic City. While sitting at the bar, they have a run-in with a washed-up, drug-addicted, alcoholic lounge singer who sings parody songs about self-gratification named Rock-Hard Rod (John Cena). Dean, Wes, and JT make it clear to Rod that they don’t want him hanging around, but Rod gives them his card anyway.

When JT’s wife, Susan (Anja Savcic), prematurely gives birth while they’re partying, Susan’s mother, Leona (Heather Mitchell), puts the boys on blast upon their return, and goes so far as to suggest that Ricky Stanicky isn’t real.

Desperate to keep up the charade, Dean calls Rock-Hard Rod in a Hail Mary attempt to smooth things over, and gives Rod the Ricky Stanicky Bible. Arriving at the airport with severe alcohol withdrawal to the point of peeing himself in between seizures, Rod refuses to take a drink to calm his nerves because the Bible says that Ricky has been in a sobriety program for years. Just when everything seems like it’s about to fall apart, Rock-Hard Rod shows up to various family and work functions (in character as Ricky Stanicky) not only having memorized the Bible from cover to cover, but also having done a considerable amount of research into each outlined event to fully understand the character.

As Ricky Stanicky continues to impress everybody he meets, the lies begin to spiral as Rock-Hard Rod commits so aggressively to the character that he ends up getting a corner office working for Summerhayes (William H. Macy), Dean’s boss at his financial firm. To complicate matters further, Rod, who despite his talents has no meaningful relationships, legally changes his name to Ricky Stanicky so he could take on the identity that has given his life and work the validation he’s been so desperately searching for his entire life.

Overall, Ricky Stanicky falls short for a couple of reasons. Clocking in at nearly two-hours, I’ll be the first person to tell you that I’d like to see the “reverse-director’s cut” in which the run-time is cut down to 90 minutes because the plot is padded by unnecessary exposition that has already been shown, so it doesn’t need to be told to the audience again. There were a couple of occasions that found me checking the seeker bar on Prime because a whole lot of nothing happens between the more memorable scenes.

I also wish that some of that runtime would have been used to go deeper into Rock-Hard Rod’s motivations because he’s one of those characters who is extremely sympathetic, as his talents are clearly coming from a dark place that’s not fully explored in the movie.

Speaking of memorable scenes … despite some of this film’s structural flaws, you need to see John Cena in action in this context because not only did he know the assignment, he brazenly approaches both Rock-Hard Rod and Ricky Stanicky with so much verve and enthusiasm that you can’t help but admire his willingness to humiliate himself (dressing up as Britney Spears and getting the dance moves down, for example) as he plays a character who’s taking on several personas, each one more ridiculous than the last.

Writer and Director Peter Farrelly has even gone on record saying that Cena showed up to production with the entire script memorized from front-to-back, which is especially fitting for the role when you consider that Rock-Hard Rod pretty much does the same thing within the movie’s fiction as he prepares for his “role.”

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At the end of the day, Ricky Stanicky sticks the landing, but I just wish it didn’t take so long to set up the dismount. But thanks to John Cena’s “anything goes” attitude, he steals every single scene he’s in, and the level of meta-humor he successfully, and earnestly, pulls off will surprise you if he’s only been somewhat on your radar over the years.

You can stream Ricky Stanicky on Amazon Prime Video, and in my most humble opinion, it’s a solid comedy that’s 100 percent worth your time, even if it runs a little long for what it’s trying to accomplish.