Starring: Zac Efron, John Cena, Jermaine Fowler, Andrew Santino, Lex Scott Davis, William H. Macy, Anja Savcic
OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆
Story: Amazon Prime Video comedy directed and co-written by Peter Farrelly. Ricky Stanicky (2024) follows three childhood best friends Dean, JT, and Wes (Zac Efron, Andrew Santino, and Jermaine Fowler) who invent the imaginary Ricky Stanicky to cover up a prank gone wrong. Two decades later, they still use Ricky to excuse their immature antics. When their partners demand to meet Ricky, they hire “Rock Hard” Rod (John Cena), a washed-up actor, to impersonate him. However, when Rod takes his role of a lifetime too far, they begin to wish they’d never invented Ricky in the first place.
Where to Watch:
Dean: Stanicky’s like one of those trick birthday candles, no matter how hard I
try to blow him out, he just keeps coming back.
Young Dean: Okay. Here are three reasons why this is a bad idea. One, cops. Two, dogs. Three, NRA front door.
Dean: Jesus, God! Was JT born with adult teeth?
Erin: Oh, come on. His teeth are cute. Look at that.
Dean: Cute? He looks like hillbilly Hitler.
Susan: Are they going to have to remove the other testicle?
JT: And can they even do that? I thought you needed at least one to live.
Susan: What? No! That’s kidneys, dumbo.
Dean: The Devil’s in the details, my friend.
JT: Hey! Good things happen to good people.
Dean: That’s right. Atlantic City, here we come.
JT: Let’s tear New Jersey a new armpit!
Wes, JT: To Ricky Stanicky!
Dean: The best friend we never had.
Wes: “Rock Hard Rod. South Jersey’s premier X-rated rock’n’roll impersonator”.
JT: So, you do a bunch of j**k-off songs to make a living?
Rod: Yeah, I do a whole act. Wall-to-wall, top-to-bottom jizz jams!
Rod: You want to know how you was hatched? Your old man was basting my rump roast and some of it dribbled into my woolly burger. You know what that makes you? A s**t baby! That’s right. You’re nothing but s**t, and you always will be!
Wes: Is that from Downton Abbey?
Rod: That was just a little skit from my childhood.
Wes: Well, you called him Hard-on Ronnie. It’s Rock Hard Rod.
JT: Oh, right, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know Weird Al Wankovic would be so sensitive.
Wes: They had to remove it.
Keith: They removed his a**hole?
Wes: Just the outer lip part.
Keith: Outer lip part? What is he, a f***ing baboon?
JT: Ricky Stanicky is not a one-man show. You know that!
Dean: It’s a fragile fabric, man. Ricky Stanicky is only to be used as a three-man team.
Wes: Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a gay Handmaid’s Tale. So I went to a pot farm, where they make cannabis milk.
JT: You played the Stanicky card to get pot milk?
JT: All we did was tell one lie.
Dean: Hundreds and hundreds of times over many, many years.
JT: We’re not telling the truth. There’ll be no truth told, okay? We’re going to do the right thing here.
Wes: Some would argue that telling the truth is the right thing to do.
Dean: What if we hire an actor to play Stanicky?
Rod: Thanks for coming out tonight, ladies and gentlemen. So horny to be here.
Wes: I just want to go on the record and say this is a really bad idea.
Dean: [referring to Rod] For a sloppy drunk, he’s a real pro when it comes to this stuff.
Wes: You’re sweating like a tweaker.
Rod: I’m sweating because I’m not on anything. I’ve been cold-turkeying the booze for three days. Smashes my world record by three days.
Rod: The nice fella I walked off the plane with, he helped me.
Wes: What fella?
Rod: He was just here. You didn’t see him? Curly eyes. Long blonde lips. He talks with a limp.
Rod: You hired me to play the role of a sober gentleman. I’m going to do so the only way I know how with artistic integrity.
Rod: You guys are supposed to be my best friends. You should be fighting over who gets to hose me down.
JT: Hey, grand-mal pi**-pants. Shut the f*** up, okay? We wouldn’t be in this predicament if you didn’t show up smelling like a nursing-home mattress.
Rod: Wow. This is a hostile set.
Rod: I failed. But did I give up? Heck, no. I just had to ask myself, what do I love? And then it was easy singing, performing, and telling filthy jokes. And that is when Rock Hard Rod was born.
Rod: [to Wes] Is there anything that you like that a regular human being can relate to on any level?
Wes: And why does Santa have to be such a fat s**t? Couldn’t he be ripped? Couldn’t he be jacked? You know? Couldn’t the elves have ordered him a Peloton, or a yoga mat, or something?
Summerhayes: Circumcision parties are my go-to when I need to relax.
Rod: Well, churn my butter with a slippery stick.
Susan: I know you’ve been through a lot, so.
Rod: Hell, yeah. They lopped off one of my nuts, for starters.
Mrs. Levine: Oh, you are still a handful!
Rod: Well, half a handful.
Rod: Ted, nice to meet you. Digging the suit and the seedlings, man.
Summerhayes: The seedlings?
Rod: The hair plugs. They’re new, right?
Summerhayes: What? No. This is my hair.
Rod: Ha! Yeah, just like a doll’s hair is her hair.
Rod: Dean, I told you I’m an actor. When I walk into a room, I want to know exactly where I came from, and I want to know what every single person in that room’s been doing. That’s what all the greats do.
Rod: Matt Damon actually bought a zoo before he filmed We Bought a Zoo.
Dean: I don’t think that’s true.
Rod: You don’t believe me? Take it up with Reddit.
Dean: In reality, having a kid is fear and anxiety with periodic moments of crushing pain. And then you get bitter, and resentful, and eventually just mean. At least that’s how it was at my house.
Leona: Is it tenable?
Rod: Oh, yeah. Of course it’s tenable. Elevenable. Twelveable. I mean, it’s infinite really, right?
JT: Where did you learn to circumcise?
Rod: Oh, had a job peeling shrimp at Beefsteak Charlie’s.
Rod: [after Summerhayes hired Rod] This is unbelievable. How cool is this, right? And I didn’t even have to fill out an application!
JT: Application?! This isn’t Little Caesar’s.
Wes: Ricky! Man of the Year? Wow! That’s so cool!
Dean: It’s not man of the year. It’s hero of the week. And it’s not wow. It’s a f***ing s**t show.
JT: If you tell Erin, she’ll tell Susan. Okay? Then what do you think is going to happen? Not only did I miss the birth of my son, but I let some p**no Peter Frampton impersonator snip his d**k with a cigar cutter.
Rod: If we became like the Paul-Newman-salad-dressing of banks, the whole world would like us.
Peterson: That is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.
Rod: [referring to Summerhayes presentation] The guy’s a world-class air-d**ker.
Summerhayes: [as he watches his presentation speech] Dear God, it’s true. Oh, God! Now it looks like I’m cupping the balls.
Rod: Hey, you’re double-donging it.
Rod: This is the role I was born to play, and I’m nailing it.
Rod: I was a drunk. Nobody respected me. My job sucked. I had no friends. But now I have all those things. And I’m sober. Alright? And if I leave here, it all goes away. My whole life, all I’ve ever been is a s**t baby. And now I get to be somebody people actually like. Don’t take that away from me, man. Please.
Dean: I had everything. I had good friends. I had a great job. The most kind-hearted, beautiful person in the whole world loved me. Erin’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m going to lose it all.
Wes: [to Dean] Do you realize that Rod had a fake life and he made it real? You had a real life and you made it fake.
Summerhayes: [after Dean’s admitted the truth about Ricky being fake] Dean, don’t worry about cleaning out your office. We’ll box it up for you, and then burn it.
Rod: Hero? Me? No. No. If there’s a hero to this story, it’s the men who saved my life. Dean Stanton. JT Levine. And Wes something.
JT, Wes: To Ricky Stanicky.
Dean: The best friend we ever had.