Ricky Stanicky
Zac Efron, the clean-cut poster boy of smut and indecency, now adds deceit to his list of on-screen iniquities.
Lying low: Jermaine Fowler, Zac Efron and Andrew Santino
Ricky Stanicky is not who you think he is. He is not so much the imaginary friend of life-long besties Dean, Wes and JT, but is their invisible scapegoat. But like many an onscreen make-believe mate, Stanicky materialises when one least expects him to. Imaginary friends are currently all the rage in the cinema, as witness last week’s horror opus Imaginary and this May’s I.F. with Ryan Reynolds. But Ricky is something else, a character so unquestionable in the lives of our protagonists that Dean’s wife Erin, Wes’s boyfriend Keith and JT’s wife Susan all think he is for real. He’s a useful distraction, a magic bullet for when things go wrong – except that nobody has met him. Yet.
The writer-director Peter Farrelly has carved a very particular slice out of the comic pie in American gross-out comedy. Nothing is beyond the pale, so long as there are generous helpings of schmaltz, good will, a smattering of disadvantaged actors in the supporting ranks and a lesson to be learned. With his brother Bobby, Farrelly brought us Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary (see below), Me, Myself & Irene and Shallow Hal, before going solo with the Oscar-winning Green Book. The brothers’ game was that if they presented enough likeable characters, the indecent antics on screen would gain comic traction just for the contextual outrage. Who cannot forget the sweet-natured Mary, embodied by Cameron Diaz, innocently applying Ben Stiller’s ejaculate onto her hair?
Here, Peter Farrelly returns to home base with his third solo feature and his film starts as it means to go on. Dean, Wes and JT are children playing trick or treat back in 1999, with Dean attired as Austin Powers, JT as Freddy Krueger and Wes as a dog with a boner. The scene that follows involves much blasphemy, dog excrement and a minor case of arson, and it was all the fault of Ricky Stanicky. Cut to the present day and the three friends are still inseparable, and still misbehaving, usually at the expense of their romantic partners. They are the typical creations of American gross-out comedy, over-privileged males who feel that they are entitled to getting regularly incapacitated on alcohol and to use derogatory language. There is a lesson to be learned here. And why are they still indivisible best friends? Because it fits the genre template and nobody else will go near them.
As an excuse to elude the baby shower held in honour of JT’s imminent sprog, the trio hatch a plan to dash to the hospital bedside of Ricky Stanicky, whose cancer has spread from his testicles to his anus. In reality, they hop on a plane to Atlantic City to have a boys’ night out rather than observe the upcoming birth of JT and Susan’s baby. Yuck! But when Susan (Anja Savcic) goes into labour six weeks’ early – and nobody can trace the whereabouts of the women’s errant husbands – Dean and co have to come up with a fabric of lies to cover their backs – and to save their necks. Because money is not a problem for these sorts of guys, they decide to hire an actor to portray the never-before-seen Ricky Stanicky. And they settle on ‘Hard Rock Rod’, a pornographic hard-rock impersonator played by John Cena…
To present a glimmer of empathetic conscience for the handsome, lying Dean, Farrelly has cast Zac Efron, an actor who specialises in gross-out comedy but who continues to charm viewers of either sex. It is the present-day notion of casting Frankie Avalon as Christian Grey. For fans of The Hangover trilogy there may be much to savour here – the sight of amiable, irresponsible, potty-mouthed guys getting into hot water – but the lack of credibility might prove a problem for other viewers. Somehow Peter Farrelly thinks he can get away with jokes about cancer, circumcision (or “cock-cutting”), alcoholism, ketamine addiction and environmental philanthropy (sorry Bono) as long as there is a moral in his story and disabled actors in the cast. The trouble is that many of the comedy scenes feature dialogue delivered like a salvo of punchlines, bearing little resemblance to real life, from which genuine comedy evolves. Which is probably why William H. Macy, as Dean and JT’s boss, who plays his role relatively straight, gets the lion’s share of any laughs going. With eight credited writers on board, there are a few funny moments, but not as many as there are toe-curlingly awful ones.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Zac Efron, Jermaine Fowler, Andrew Santino, Lex Scott Davis, Anja Savcic, Jeff Ross, William H. Macy, John Cena, Debra Lawrance, Heather Mitchell, Daniel Monks, Jane Badler, Marta Kaczmarek, Ryan Shelton.
Dir Peter Farrelly, Pro Paul Currie, Thorsten Schumacher, John Jacobs and Michael De Luca, Screenplay Jeff Bushell, Brian Jarvis, James Lee Freeman, Peter Farrelly, Pete Jones and Mike Cerrone, from a story by David Occhino and Jason Decker, Ph John Brawley, Pro Des Gary Mackay, Ed Patrick J. Don Vito, Music Dave Palmer, Costumes Katherine Milne, Dialect coach Jenny Kent.
Footloose Productions/Rocket Science/VicScreen/Smart Entertainment/Blue Rider Media/Bright White Light-Amazon Media/Prime Video.
112 mins. USA. 2023. UK and US Rel: 7 March 2024. Cert. 15.
