I was pleasantly surprised by Ricky Stanicky. The John Cena/Zac Efron comedy brought back the bro-esque comedies from the early ’00s but also had a lot of heart behind the chaos. So what does the ending of the movie mean for this group? Who is Ricky Stanicky?
Throughout the movie, Dean (Zac Efron) and his childhood friends are trying to keep up the false illusion of imaginary scapegoat “Ricky Stanicky” alive. JT (Andrew Santino) missed the birth of his son Wes (Jermaine Fowler), refuses to talk about his relationship with his partner, and just keeps blaming Ricky, and Dean is just too afraid to talk with his girlfriend about the very real issues he had growing up. It’s easier to just blame everything on Ricky.
The three created Ricky as a way of getting out of trouble, and the bit has continued their entire lives, including leaving JT and Susan’s baby shower to go to a concert in Atlantic City and saying that Ricky “had cancer again” in order to leave. When they got in trouble, they said it was Ricky who lied about cancer just to hang with them all. That finally made the women in their lives question who Ricky was.
So, they bring him to life by hiring an actor named Rod (John Cena) to play their imaginary childhood friend. Rod takes it a little too seriously, and by the end of the movie, we learn how much the three ended up saving Rod’s life despite them all thinking he has taken this too far.
After Rod got a job working with JT and Dean and kept calling himself “Ricky,” he took part in a “hero of the week” segment that Erin (Lex Scott Davis), Dean’s girlfriend, was doing in a gig as a local news reporter. She realized that the boys were lying and still used Rod as her subject to highlight what JT, Wes, and Dean did for him. It meant that they all had to come clean about Ricky and come to terms with what their years of lying meant to their loved ones.
So are the boys friends?
By the end of the movie, the boys are actually friends with the new Ricky. We see flashes of their lives and how Ricky is there for them, and it all stems from their lives getting a little too out of control. So while it isn’t a perfect ending or a metaphor for how you shouldn’t lie to get away with things, the ending of Ricky Stanicky is surprisingly heartwarming.
These three friends were just trying to cover their own lies but made a friend in the process and ended up saving his life, whether they meant to or not.
(featured image: Prime Video)
