‘Ricky Stanicky’
R for language throughout, some drug content and sexual material. frat guy mentality of the early aughts).
And unfortunately, “Ricky Stanicky” feels like one of those lesser 2000 comedies that wanted so badly to be “There’s Something About Mary.” It makes a certain amount of sense when you consider that the script has been circling Hollywood for about 15 years. At one point, James Franco was attached to the title role. A few years later, it was going to be Jim Carrey. This development journey is one of the reasons why there are six credited screenwriters on the version that finally got made (Jeff Bushell and Brian Jarvis & James Lee Freeman & Peter Farrelly & Pete Jones & Mike Cerrone). It’s impossible to tell where the (I assume) good ended and the bad started to creep in, but three ampersands are rarely a good sign in film credits.
It has stamps of a Farrelly romp – a bit with a dog and a duck, a little accidental drugging, a comedic circumcision and an album’s worth of pop songs reworked to be about masturbation – but little of the charm. Is this, perhaps, a piece of comedy that should have been made when it was written? Was it doomed to be revived for 2024 audiences?
One of the problems is that it is filmed with all the artfulness of a yogurt commercial. Everything looks like a set. Everyone looks like an actor. The women are all surface. Nothing seems remotely real, ever, not even the blindingly bright lighting.
The one bright spot is Cena, who is quite good. Like his character, who goes above and beyond to adeptly play Ricky Stanicky, Cena really and truly commits and brings a kind of unexpected depth and pathos to Rock Hard Rod. He’s flexed his comedy muscles before and should again, soon. Is it enough to save the movie? Not for me.