'Ricky Stanicky' review: John Cena gets the laughs in middling comedy

This image released by Amazon Prime shows John Cena, right, in a scene from “Ricky Stanicky.” This image released by Amazon Prime shows John Cena, right, in a scene from “Ricky Stanicky.” This image released by Amazon Prime shows, from left, Jermaine Fowler, Zac Efron and Andrew Santino in a scene from “Ricky Stanicky.” This image released by Amazon Prime shows, from left, Jermaine Fowler, Zac Efron and Andrew Santino in a scene from “Ricky Stanicky.

“Ricky Stanicky” is a name chosen in haste by three pre-teen boys who have just accidentally lit a house on fire. They didn’t mean to commit arson, they simply wanted to burn some dog poop on the doorstep of a house that didn’t give out any Halloween candy. When the fire gets out of control, they leave behind a jacket with a fake name inscribed in it: Ricky Stanicky. He becomes their imaginary fourth friend and forever fall guy even into adulthood .

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., 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.

“Ricky Stanicky,” an MGM/Amazon Studios release streaming on Prime Video Thursday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “language throughout, some drug content and sexual material.” Running time: 112 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.

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