Ricky Stanicky: Uneven vulgarity

Ricky Stanicky (2024) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for drug use, sexual candor, and relentless profanity and raunch

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

Although director Peter Farrelly has gained respect for serious fare such as Green Book and The Greatest Beer Run Ever, one knows what to expect when he indulges his smuttier instincts: a thoroughly dumb story, and relentless raunch.

 

Rod (John Cena, far right) tries hard to ingratiate himself with, from left, Dean
(Zac Efron), JT (Andrew Santino) and Wes (Jermaine Fowler). The effort fails, but
not to worry; they'll meet again.

Both are boldly front and center in his new film.

That said, Ricky Stanicky gets plenty of momentum from an audacious and absolutely hilarious performance by star John Cena. He’s a veritable force of motor-mouthed, well-timed comedy, and this film would sink into oblivion without him.

 

But we don’t meet him right away. Events begin during a prologue on Halloween night 1999, when obnoxious brats Dean, JT and Wes decide to get even with homeowners who have a reputation for not giving out candy. Their prank goes horribly awry, nearly burning down the house in an appalling and thoroughly unfunny sequence that almost torches this film before it has a chance to start.

 

While fleeing the carnage, the three boys concoct the “alibi” that sets up what is to follow: They write the name “Ricky Stanicky” on a discarded item of clothing, the way a child’s mother would have done, and leave it at the scene. The police therefore focus on trying to find a juvenile delinquent who doesn’t exist.

 

During the next couple of decades — via an animation montage that serves as title credits — the boys use Ricky as the fall guy for all manner of bad behavior. As they get older, Ricky morphs into a “good friend” employed as a get-together excuse for skipping things Dean, JT and Wes simply don’t want to do.

 

Cut to the present day, at which point these guys have become the ultimate arrested adolescents. Over time, they’ve developed a thick “bible” of Ricky’s supposed exploits as a wealthy, tree-hugging do-gooder, along with a litany of childhood and adult achievements and ailments.

 

And yet — as established by this wildly uneven script from Farrelly and seven (!) other hands — Dean (Zac Efron) and JT (Andrew Santino) somehow managed to land high-profile jobs at an investment firm run by Ted Summerhayes (William H. Macy). Dean is blessed with girlfriend Erin (Lex Scott Davis), who hopes to become a respected TV news journalist; JT is married to Susan (Anja Savcic), and they’re expecting their first child.

 

The cannabis-obsessed Wes (Jermaine Fowler), alas, is at loose ends. His half-hearted efforts to write a children’s book haven’t impressed hard-working boyfriend Keith (Daniel Monks).

The Blackening: Not such a much

The Blackening (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence, drug use and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theater

By Derrick Bang

Given the clichés and predictable plot pitfalls into which most modern horror films fall, director Tim Story and his writers — Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins — deserve credit for some cogent social commentary, and for trying to shake things up a bit.

 

With no clue where their attacker might be hiding, Lisa (Antoinette Robertson) arms
herself with a heavy wooden candle holder ... and lots of prayers.

Alas, “trying” is as far as they get. At the end of the day, this becomes just another tiresome example of the “idiot plot” … which lurches forward, from one moment to the next, solely because each and every character behaves like an idiot at all times.

On top of which, these are insufferable chatty idiots.

 

Not even halfway through this increasingly tiresome flick, one wishes everybody would shut up for 5 minutes, so that Story and editor Peter S. Elliot could generate some actual tension.

 

The setting is ye old cabin in the woods (although, as one character points out, it’s more a good-sized house than a cramped cabin). Lisa (Antoinette Robertson, a plucky heroine) and her long-unseen college friends — King (Melvin Gregg), Allison (Grace Byers), Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls), Clifton (Jermaine Fowler, badly overplaying his role), Dewayne (Perkins) and Shanika (X Mayo) — have gathered for a Juneteenth reunion. The sole items on the agenda: recreational drugs, too much alcohol, a bit of sex and a weekend-long Spades marathon. 

 

(The card game, of course.) 

 

(But yes, that choice is a bit on the nose.)

 

Pretty much before anybody can blink, they all wind up trapped in the “Game Room,” which features a game called The Blackening. The game board’s centerpiece is an offensively retro, three-dimensional, minstrel-style face … which talks. 

 

It instructs them to play the game, which consists of Trivial Pursuit-style cards designed to test their knowledge of Black culture: “Name five Black actors who guest-starred on Friends,” “Recite the second verse of the Black National Anthem,” and so forth.

 

Within 60 seconds, for each question. 

 

Failure to play along … will result in death.

 

What this septet doesn’t know — what we’ve already seen, during the story’s prologue — is that the first two guests, Shawn (Jay Pharoah) and Morgan (Yvonne Orji), arrived earlier, and immediately ran afoul of a hulking thug in a blackface mask, wielding a wicked crossbow.