Peter Farrelly squashed his wacko comedic instincts—as well as left his brother and long-time partner Bobby behind—to win Oscar gold with 2018’s Green Book. Yet having failed to capitalize on that career-transforming reinvention into a dramatic director with 2022’s lame The Greatest Beer Run Ever, he now reverts to silly form with Ricky Stanicky. A lighthearted affair about a trio of buddies who attempt to perpetuate a lifelong lie to extreme role-playing ends, it’s little more than a creaky lark that fails to generate consistent laughs, even if it proves that John Cena is a charming goof-off who’s game for anything.

Layering outrageous absurdity on top of an inherently sweet story about finding yourself, your friends, and happiness via both honesty and deceit, Ricky Stanicky, which hits Prime Video Mar. 7, opens with a flashback to Halloween night 1999. Out trick-or-treating, young Dean, JT and Wes try to leave a bag of flaming dogshit on a nasty local’s doorstep, only to accidentally light the entire house on fire. Failing to stymie the blaze, the three idiot kids flee the scene and, in a moment of amazing inspiration, Dean gets the idea to cover their tracks by leaving behind a coat with the made-up name Ricky Stanicky written on its collar.

Thus, an enduring lie is born—that of an imaginary pal designed to take the fall for their various misdeeds and, also, to serve as an excuse to escape any unfavorable or unwanted situation. In the present day, that con is once again employed by the now-grown Dean (Zac Efron) and JT (Andrew Santino), who concoct a story about the cancer-stricken Ricky that convinces their respective partners Erin (Lex Scott Davis) and Susan (Anja Savcic) to let them ditch JT and Susan’s baby shower.

Freed from this obligation, Dean and JT meet up with Wes (Jermaine Fowler) and depart their Providence, Rhode Island hometown for Atlantic City to attend a concert, gamble, and get drunk. While working on those latter two objectives, they encounter Rock Hard Rod (Cena), an alcoholic would-be actor who puts on a low-rent rock ‘n’ roll impersonator show in which he performs famous songs but changes the lyrics to be about masturbation (i.e., doing Billy Idol’s “White Wedding,” he croons, “It’s a nice day to, jizz again!”).

Rod is a never-was who’s detested by the casino bartender and only barely tolerated by Dean, JT, and Wes, who quickly tell him to take a hike. Still, feeling bad about their treatment of the loser, Dean apologizes, at which point Rod gives him his card, which comes in handy when the threesome goes home and their loved ones—led by Susan’s skeptical mom Leona (Heather Mitchell)—demand that the mythic Ricky attend JT and Susan’s newborn son’s bris.

While Wes tries to come clean about their ruse, Dean is unwilling to let decades of deception go to waste and instead agrees to get Ricky to the event. To do this, he hires Rod to play Ricky, using a “bible” of their various lies about the make-believe character as background for his act.

Ben King / Prime

As invented by Dean, JT and Wes, Ricky is a globe-trotting philanthropic do-gooder who’s worked with Bono in Africa, and while that role seems out of Rod’s range—especially when he shows up in Rhode Island still shaking from detox, since he’s gone “method” to inhabit the in-recovery Ricky—he arrives at the festivities like a whirlwind. Dressed in a snazzy tan suit and matching bent-brimmed hat, and full of lively and charismatic personality (and deep knowledge of Ricky’s history), the imposter wows everyone, including Dean and JT’s financial-services boss Ted (William H. Macy), who subsequently hires Ricky, thereby jeopardizing the careers of Dean, JT, and newscaster Erin, who plans to profile Ricky on TV.

Though Ricky Stanicky starts slowly, it temporarily kicks into gear during Rod’s first outing as Ricky courtesy of Cena, who infuses the protagonist with an unlikely and entertaining confidence and poise that peaks during his assistance with the tyke’s circumcision. However, written by a veritable team of screenwriters (Jeff Bushell, Brian Jarvis, James Lee Freeman, Pete Jones, Mike Cerrone, and Farrelly) from a story by David Occhino and Jason Decker, the film has no sooner gotten going than its momentum flags, thanks to scenarios that aren’t as over-the-top as they should be and wannabe-wacko one-liners that mostly fail to land.

A gag involving a ketamine-doped rabbi (Jeff Ross) ends before it begins, as does a bit in which a long-haired woman (Apple Farrelly) gets her Rapunzel-length locks stuck in a bowling ball chute. The rest of the material is even more tepid, including Ricky informing Ted that when he speaks publicly, he gestures in a manner that makes him a “world-class air dicker.”

Ben King / Prime

Per his trademark, Farrelly populates his supporting cast with disabled actors and undercuts his outlandishness with squishy pathos that, in this instance, is tossed-off to the point of being intrusive; the explanation for why Dean lies, for example, is so perfunctory that it may as well have been excised from the final cut. The director has always balanced the serenely stupid with the saccharine, but Ricky Stanicky’s hijinks and treacle are equally lukewarm. While the mild script and Farrelly’s flat direction are largely to blame for these shortcomings, Efron, Santino, and Fowler also shoulder some responsibility, as they never exhibit the sort of rowdy boys-behaving-badly chemistry that made a like-minded venture such as The Hangover so inappropriately amusing.

Ricky Stanicky is merely a listless entry in the subgenre of comedies about uncontrollable wild-card interlopers who cause mayhem for middle-class folks. Yet if it never manages to leave a memorably mirthful mark, it’s not for lack of trying on Cena’s part. Whether sloppily cosplaying as Alice Cooper, Britney Spears, and Boy George or driving his new BFFs nuts at their place of employment, Cena is a gung-ho purveyor of ridiculousness, and his enthusiasm is occasionally enough to trick one into thinking that the proceedings might actually become funny. They don’t, but if nothing else, the headliner’s performance does reaffirm his humorous bona fides—and makes one pine to see him return to the truly loopy Peacemaker.