Rating: Half-Full

Genre: Comedy

Studios: Metro-Goldwyn Mayer/Footloose Productions/Rocket Science

Cast: Zac Efron, Jermaine Fowler, Andrew Santino, Lex Scott Davis, Anja Savcic, Jeff Ross, William H. Macy and John Cena

Director: Peter Farrelly

Writers: Jeff Bushell, Mike Cerrone, Jason Decker, Peter Farrelly, Brian Jarvis, Pete Jones, James Lee Freeman and David Occhino

Producers: Paul Currie, Michael De Luca, John Jacobs and Thorsten Schumacher

Music by: Dave Palmer

Rated: R for sexual material, language throughout and some drug content

Release Date: 03/07/24

Runtime: 1h 53m

Tagline: He’s the best friend they never had.

Favorite Character: Rod Rimestead/Ricky Stanicky

Quote: “Stanicky’s like one of those trick birthday candles, no matter how hard I try to blow him out, he just keeps coming back.”- Dean

Fun Fact: The movie was first announced in 2010 so the movie took fourteen years to make.

The Review: Growing up, you might did something bad and blame it on your sibling or friend or someone you made up. In Ricky Stanicky, that’s what these three childhood best friends (Zac Efron, Jermaine Fowler and Andrew Santino) did. 25 years ago on Halloween, these three committed a prank that went horribly wrong. Rather than telling the truth, they invented an imaginary best friend named, who else? Ricky Stanicky.

But that doesn’t stop there! Throughout the animated opening sequences, they took advantage of it and do mischievous things and also lying to their families using non existent Ricky to pin a blame on. We jumped to present day, they are still using the name to lie their partners to go anywhere they want. this time, saying that Ricky has cancer to get out of the baby shower of JT’s wife and going to Marc Rebillet concert in Atlantic City. But that caused JT to miss his son’s birth. Worse for them, their partners are starting to get suspicious. Wes of course had to almost spill the beans.

Well let’s face it, had these guys not been to Atlantic City, they would have not have met the best star of the film , John Cena (cue his theme song) Cena plays Rod Rimestead, struggling at life and does a X Rated version of Weird Al songs for a living. But he also is an actor who also nailed the Owen Wilson impression, he does impressions and he wasted it at a Atlantic City show. But anyway the three guys hired him to play Ricky Stanicky just for JT’s son’s bris to prove to their partners he is real, although, Dean’s mother in law wasn’t all that convinced.

It works for the guys, maybe a little too well. Because Rod is really starting to turn into the real Ricky Stanicky and all it takes to make him a real deal is for him to perform a circumsice. The fact that these guys got away with their lies for 25 years is hard to believe I mean if someone did, it would be impressive, but let’s not forget that this is just a movie so anything is possible. As for the plot itself, when I saw the premise for the movie, I somewhat knew it was going to suffer with a formulaic story.

If you are a single person with a drug problem and wants to get a good lesson about redemption, go to Amazon Prime. If you want to be entertained by John Cena go to Amazon Prime. If you want some laughs, I suggest you go somewhere else.