'Ricky Stanicky' review: John Cena gives his all in comedic dud

Say this much for John Cena: He's committed.

He'll go for the laugh, however embarrassing, and he'll surrender to the bit, however unconvincing it may be, to try and get it over. He's a salesman, a professional, and all those years he spent inside a pro wrestling ring having stripped him of whatever fear might exist inside him as a performer.

If only he were more discerning in his choices.

Cena goes for it, all the way for it, in "Ricky Stanicky," a thoroughly dumb comedy that all the commitment in the world can't rescue. Cena wants it to work so bad you can taste it, but the 16-time World Wrestling Entertainment champion can't salvage material that would be too dopey for a seventh grader's creative writing class. But if he ever finds material worthy of his level of dedication and his desire to be a comedic star, it could be the formula for something special.

"Stanicky" isn't special. Cena plays a down-and-out Atlantic City actor who performs as Rock Hard Rod, purveyor of a one-man show of masturbation-themed covers of 1980s pop hits, material Cena sells with earnest, almost heartwarming conviction.

He gets hired by a trio of friends — Dean (Zac Efron), JT (Andrew Santino) and Wes (Jermaine Fowler) — who, since they were childhood pals, have passed off all their misdeeds onto an imaginary scapegoat, whom they named, entirely unconvincingly, Ricky Stanicky. They use the Stanicky alibi to plan guys' weekends, get out of trouble at home and all manner of indiscretions. If they're in a jam, bam, they play the Stanicky card.

When JT misses the birth of his child due to Stanicky-related shenanigans, the crew hires Rod to play the mystery man, to prove to family and friends that he's real and has always been. But Rod plays him a little too well and interjects himself into their lives, and when he won't go away, the guys have to figure out how to make Stanicky disappear.

Even the most negligible belief in the premise would require that every character in the movie is so gullible that they'd be unable to function in society. (Only one person seems skeptical of the multiple decades of Stanicky-related lies, everyone else just kind of goes along with it.)

It's not that comedic storylines need to be entirely airtight, but director Peter Farrelly ("Green Book," "The Greatest Beer Run Ever") grounds his story in a real world setting, and attempts to bake a level of schmaltzy sweetness into it to boot. It's an attempt to offset the gross-out bad boy humor, a formula he and his brother Bobby used to employ in films like "Dumb & Dumber" and "There's Something About Mary." But here it's entirely mishandled and misguided to the point where the comedy, the believability of the story and the truth of the characters all completely flatline. You never believe any of it for a second.

Efron, so soul crushing in "The Iron Claw," is coasting on fumes here, and Santino and Fowler barely register. (William H. Macy, who plays Dean's boss, is best forgotten.) By and large "Ricky Stanicky" is the John Cena show, but the movie, which is alternately rancid and cloying, is just too lugheaded to overcome. Cena's a winner, but "Stanicky" is a loser.

agraham@detroitnews.com

'Ricky Stanicky'

GRADE: D

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

Running time: 112 minutes

On Amazon Prime Video