Brief Story Line
Three best friends Dean (Zac Efron - Scoob!, Neighbors etc), Wes (Jermaine Fowler - Coming 2 America etc) and JT (Andrew Santino - Dave TV series etc) had been using the name Ricky Stanicky which they created since childhood as their scapegoat for the past twenty years whenever they ran into trouble. Dean's girlfriend Erin (Lexi Scott Davis - Sweet Girl etc) and JT's wife Susan (Anja Savcic) had heard about Ricky many times as the best friend whom they never met.
In an upcoming family event, the trio's family especially JT's mother in-law Leona (Heather Mitchell - The Unusual Suspects TV series etc) demanded that Ricky join so they could all finally meet him. With so much pressure, Dean proposed to look for a person to impersonate Ricky. They finally decided to hire small time actor named Rock-Hard Rod (John Cena - Freelance, Vacation Friends etc) who was working as entertainer in Atlantic City, singing popular songs turned into sex parody.
So would Rod be able to perform his role and what would happen to them all? You could find out in this film.
End of Brief Story Line
As fan of comedy movies especially the kind where the main characters doing absurd stuff like this, I was obviously interested in watching such film. Plus two of the lead cast were experienced in similar movies in the past that made me confident it would be entertaining. So I watched this one with high anticipation and hoping for many moments where I could laugh out loud. At first it was quite promising with the background of Ricky Stanicky's creation and the part where the trio adult men had very detailed history of what "Ricky" did in the past. But the introduction of Rock-Hard Rod did not feel interesting and convincing enough.
Luckily with the story progressing, we got to see Rod in action which frankly was hilarious, especially when he sang those horrible songs (that last famous song he performed was absolutely terrible but very funny to me). Oh the jokes here were definitely more proper for adults which would explain the R Rating and 16+ on Prime. Anyway the film was more fun when we got to see Rod in action performing his role as Ricky with plenty of almost-found-out situations. It was certainly helped with the portrayal of John Cena (he seemed to be enjoying his moments nowadays playing comedic roles).
With a long duration of 114 minutes, I could foresee that there would be a "plot twist" to cover the final third. It was actually kind of predictable and even the ending was easy to guess. Only thing is that at some point of time, I felt the story became too serious but the ending was overly simplistic for such seriousness. It made me feel a bit of inconsistency here. Btw, during the closing credits there were some additional scenes that you could watch and a bit of humorous scene.
This movie was directed by Peter Farrelly who together with his brother Bobby (collectively known as Farrelly Brothers) were directors of hit comedies such as Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary and several others. I also thought the cast were pretty decent, with John Cena in particular who was pretty awesome at times. In addition to those names I mentioned above, there were support characters like Wes' partner Keith (Daniel Monks), JT's mother (Debra Lawrance - Home and Away TV series etc) and Dean and JT's boss Summerhayes (William H. Macy - Blood Father, Jurassic Park III etc).
Overall this was OK for a comedy movie with interesting plot and some moments of hilarity here and there. However, the rather serious tone in the middle and the conclusion that was too simple made it feel a bit inconsistent. I also think the duration was too long for such kind of film. So if you just want to have a little bit of fun, then you could give this a try, but do not expect the quality that you could find in Farrelly's previous works.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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