It’s 1999 and when a Halloween prank goes badly wrong for Dean, JT and Wes they make up a friend called Ricky Stanicky who they can place the blame on. Fast forward twenty-five years and Ricky Stanicky has a whole life that is entirely devised around Dean (Zac Efron), JT (Andrew Santino) and Wes (Jermaine Fowler) using him as their fall guy. 

So when they push the charade one step too far and are nearly discovered they double down and hire out of work actor Rod Rimestead (John Cena) to be Ricky. Rod proceeds to go full method and make Ricky a real person. 

Ricky Stanicky has one of the craziest high concepts for a comedy movie that I have seen in quite some time. The idea that three childhood friends over the course of twenty-five years would create a bible which outlines everything that Ricky has done in order to be able to get their stories straight when lying to every loved one they have is frankly wild. These men have wives and partners with whom they have never been completely honest in their entire lives. The set up opens up the story and jokes to go to almost any avenue. So of course the story mainly focuses on puerile dick jokes and involves virtually zero character growth! 

The result is like watching a car crash. It is horrific but you can not avert your eyes as you wonder what on earth is going to happen next. 

John Cena certainly does his absolute best to make you laugh. There is an incredibly unfunny section where he does cover versions of pop songs whilst dressed as singers like Britney Spears and Billy Idol whilst changing their famous lyrics to be related to masturbating. It is surreal. But whatever is asked of him he fully commits and sometimes it works. It is rare but when it works it feels as though it is through his sheer strength of will. 

Elsewhere Zac Efron is completely wasted, whilst his fellow “friends” played by Andrew Santino and Jermaine Fowler are virtually non existent as characters. And then even more bizarrely William H. Macy appears as Dean and JT’s boss and of course outdoes them all in the acting and comedy stakes. 

Bizarrely as the credits rolled and I saw the film was directed by Peter Farrelly it felt as though everything came together. In the 90’s and 00’s Peter wrote and directed alongside his brother Bobby and created the wonderful Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary before getting diminishing returns with the likes of Me, Myself & Irene, Shallow Hal and Stuck On You. The one thing they never shied away from though was outlandish humour and puerile jokes. It seems that Ricky Stanicky is a perfect fit thematically but the outcome is not a patch on any of those aforementioned films. 

Best avoided or watched out of a morbid curiosity!