By John Corrado

The name of Peter Farrelly, and his brother Bobby, used to be synonymous with a certain brand of raunchy comedies like Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary and Shallow Hal.

When Peter went solo in 2018, it led to him making the awards bait crowdpleaser Green Book, which inexplicably won the Oscar for Best Picture (thanks to a raucous premiere at TIFF where it picked up the People’s Choice Award).

Following another foray into Oscar-bait filmmaking in 2022 with The Greatest Beer Run Ever (which didn’t lead to any awards), Peter Farrelly returns to the world of low-brow, R-rated comedies with Ricky Stanicky, an uneven but still kinda funny comedy that reunites him with his Beer Run star Zac Efron.

Efron stars in the film as Dean Stanton, who has gotten out of many sticky situations with his boys JT (Andrew Santino) and Wes (Jermaine Fowler) over the years by blaming Ricky Stanicky, their completely made up best friend. It all stems back to an incident as kids on Halloween night in 1999, when the three friends invented Ricky Stanicky as a way to pass the buck for accidentally setting a porch on fire.

As adults, Ricky comes in handy when they want to sneak away from their partners and go on vacation, with the fictitious friend taking on an increasingly elaborate backstory as a philanthropist doing work in Africa and battling testicular cancer. Things begin to get out of hand when the guys use Ricky to get out of JT’s baby shower and go to a concert in Atlantic City, by pretending to be visiting their friend in the hospital after his cancer has come back.

It’s here that they happen to meet Rod Rimestead (John Cena), a washed up, alcoholic actor who performs as Rock Hard Rod, doing impersonations of rock stars singing masturbatory parodies of their songs (a pretty funny bit). Long story short, when Dean, JT and Wes get caught in the lie and need an alibi, they hire Rod to play the role of Ricky in front of their family and friends.

Narratively, the film has some pacing issues. It doesn’t even really feel like it has a proper middle act, with the 112 minute running time feeling more like two halves. There are some tonal shifts that the film doesn’t fully commit to, including moments when the comedy could get a lot darker than it ever really does, but kind of pulls back.

There is probably a more cutting version of this story that could have been told, but is somewhat lost in the mix (the screenplay is credited to a total of six different writers, including Farrelly, with the “story by” credit going to two others). The production also has a somewhat cheap, made-for-TV look to it (the film was shot in Australia, standing in for Rhode Island). But gone are the days when a comedy like this would be made for theatres instead of streaming.

There is a sketch-like feel to a lot of the bits here (in a different era, Stanicky could have been a recurring character on Saturday Night Live), but a lot of the sequences are just amusing enough to keep the film watchable. It’s centred around a go-for-broke performance from Cena, who gives the role his all. He is essentially playing two characters, the washed up actor Rod and the fictitious Ricky, with one of the jokes being how seriously he takes his craft and committing to the role. At times we wish his creation was starring in a slightly better overall movie.

Some of the character beats feel rushed, but there is still a bit of heart to the film’s last act redemption arc. It’s a dumb comedy that doesn’t hold a candle to vintage Farrelly Brothers, and there is a nagging feeling that the film was produced as a piece of disposable streaming content. But there are enough amusing moments scattered throughout and a committed John Cena performance to keep it mildly entertaining.

Film Rating: ★★ (out of 4)

John Cena as ‘Ricky Stanicky’ stars in RICKY STANICKY Credit: Ben King/Prime

Ricky Stanicky is now available to stream exclusively on Prime Video.