A movie can occasionally set expectations precisely. In the opening scene of Peter Farrelly’s Ricky Stanicky, a little boy describes his Halloween costume to his friends: “I’m a dog with a boner,” he says, imitating dog genitalia with a red Sharpie. His companion gives him an almost imperceptibly soft laugh. That’s the strongest response you should anticipate from every joke in Ricky Stanicky: clumsy parodies of dick jokes that make you groan more than laugh out loud.
Friends Dean (Zac Efron), JT (Andrew Santino), and Wes (Jermaine Fowler) have escaped danger and bridal showers alike by using their fictitious pal Ricky Stanicky. The idea of the film is entertaining (a made-up friend’s lifetime lie has become all too real), but it doesn’t do much with it other than go from one pointless story device to the next.
Funny one-liners become boring multi-minute segments.
This movie barely had any noteworthy events, which is remarkable for a two-hour movie. It wears you out. There is no character development, and jokes that could be lighthearted one-liners end up being multi-minute segments that only go in the most cliched and predictable directions.
The only redeeming feature about this is John Cena, who plays the title character Ricky and does his absolute hardest to make something out of nothing. Even his incredibly heroic performance as Rod/Ricky, which is admirable since he will stop at nothing to make people laugh, is insufficient to make a meaningful contribution. To be fair, he does receive the greatest joke in the film, which appears roughly two minutes before the end credits.
It’s meant to be humorous, but the final act is so very boring and full of overly repetitious childish jokes that it feels more like you’re watching a duck try to drown a dog. To be clear, that isn’t just a corny metaphor; in Ricky Stanicky, it actually occurs for an unexplained reason.