Ricky Stanicky (2024)
★½
This review may contain spoilers.
a comedy is easy to like, it makes you laugh makes you let down you guard, but a good comedy makes you feel along with laugh, this did not do that, wish it did, it felt so close, the beats are here, the thoughts and themes and ideas are here, but yet ultimately it falls real short. so much more was said out loud than written down, but the notes are below.
it's not bad, it's just kind of ehh and thats it.
notes below
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- cool 2d intro.
- John Cena has such good comedic timing.
- I do like this thought of Ricky Stanicky coming in and fixing the crew, getting them back on track.
- "you guys see my red robin commercial yet"
- I like this thought process of second chances that is presented in the film.
- John Cena carries this movie, none of the other actors are really given anything here to work with, or emote
- this beat with Zac's character needs more time to develop it's the emotional low point of the film and it needed another few passes, we should have seen what his father did to him, or at least the implied-ness of it, the reveal here should have been I went back to your house and found out that you didn't have a ditch in your backyard not your making up lies to escape your current life, another thought in this movie that doesn't really get a lot of time to develop, imagine if this film was intercut with a storyline from when they were kids all about this, seeing the contradictions and connections to who they are now as kids, seeing Zac's character starting to lie a ridiculous amount, seeing him forming this fake life for himself that now infects his present life, that would be a cool idea and it seems like there are remints of that here, if rewritten and enhanced that could make for one heck of a story.
- we hear about the hints that JT would get into trouble for lying about these events, we know the result of those events but we are never really given the stakes of these events or shown what might happen, only implied stuff.
- this movie comes down to implied events, it's implied heavily these things that might happen, but it is never really challenged beyond that, none of the actors who are really talented are given much to work with here and none of the characters are given interesting traits, the only one arguably is Wes who does have things going from him and kind of grows and challenges his friends world view, you could argue that's the point but still implied-ness doesn't work for a visually story.
- this is a silly comedy movie, you don't have to go this dark, you don't have to go this far, but when you bring these thoughts and themes up you do have to explore them for them to have pay off.
- this news cast could have had some build up, some pay off, but it ultimately falls flat.
- that's all the fall out to JT?
