“Ricky Stanicky,” a new feel-good comedy from director Peter Farrelly, starring Zac Efron, Andrew Santino, John Cena and Jermaine Fowler, and now streaming on Amazon Prime, is light on laughs but heavy on heart.
Ever since they were kids, best friends Dean, JT, and Wes (Efron, Santino and Fowler) have used a fictional friend named Ricky Stanicky as a fall guy for their hijinks. Even though he doesn’t exist, he’s been their alibi forever. They’ve used him as an excuse to go on guy’s weekends to Atlantic City, or catch a concert, and then blame him for anything that went wrong. “The best friend we never had,” says Dean.
But when Dean ups the ante and announces to his wife that Ricky has cancer, and the guys need to see him, Wes thinks they may have taken the ruse a bit too far.
“Why does it have to be cancer?” he asks. “You want everyone to get worried?”
“Yeah,” Dean says. “And that’s going to take us right into the World Series.”
When the boys split town, Dean’s wife (Lex Scott Davis) tries to track them down, only to discover there is no record of a Ricky Stanicky at any hospital anywhere.
Caught in their lifelong lie, they panic.
“If the truth does come out,” says JT, “my marriage is over.”
The plan to hire an actor to play Ricky leads them to Rock hard Rod (Cena), an X-rated rock and roll impersonator, who immediately ingratiates himself with their significant others and their boss Summerhayes (William H. Macy).
“Ricky Stanicky” has the earmarks of a Farrelly film; the outrageous premise, the jokes that come very close to the line and broad comedic performances (ie: John Cena dressed like “Baby One More Time” era Britney Spears). But underneath the silly stuff is an almost touching story about a man who finds a new way to get through life.
“My job sucked,” Ricky/Rod says. “I had no friends. But now I have all those things.”
It’s the same kind of subterfuge the Farrellys played with “There’s Something About Mary,” a gross-out comedy about finding true love. “Ricky Stanicky” doesn’t have the hard laughs of that film, but, in Cena, it does have a star who is able to effectively mix-and-match the silly with the saccharine. That combo is the key to the modest success of “Ricky Stanicky.”
It’s a shame Cena isn’t given a more convincing framework to play inside. The premise has lots of potential, but Farrelly and his laundry list of writers (five listed in the credits including Farrelly) emphasize the Hallmark aspects of the story over the humorous ones.
There’s something about “Ricky Stanicky.” There’s a good cast, bolstered by Cena’s charm, and the occasional deep laugh but the mix of humour and heart never quite finds the right balance.
Steeped in tragedy and trauma, “The Iron Claw,” a movie about the Von Erich wrestling family starring Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White, and now playing in theatres, isn’t a sports movie. Set against the backdrop of professional wrestling, the movie is study of toxic masculinity and how the sins of the father can be visited on their sons.
The film begins with Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany) patriarch of the championship Von Erich wrestling dynasty. Early in his career, in an attempt to create a villainous heel persona, he changed his name from Jack Adkisson to the German sounding Fritz Von Erich. The switch purposely stoked post-war animosity and made him a wrestler audiences loved to hate.
In the ring he was a relentless competitor, the purveyor of the deadly Iron Claw, his much-feared finishing move that squeezed his opponent’s face into mush. Outside the ring his drive to win saw him push his sons Kevin (Efron), Kerry (White), David (Harris Dickinson) and Mike (Stanley Simons), into the family business.
“Now, we all know Kerry’s my favourite, then Kev, then David, then Mike,” said Fritz. “But the rankings can always change.”
Under Fritz’s hardnosed guidance, the Von Erich’s became one of the first wrestling families to become popular, winning championship belts and fans for their high-flying, acrobatic style but their accomplishments are tempered by tragedy, which son Kevin blames on a curse brought on by the family’s adopted name.
“Ever since I was a child, people said my family was cursed,” Kevin said. “Mom tried to protect us with God. Dad tried to protect us with wrestling. He said if we were the toughest, the strongest, nothing could ever hurt us. I believed him. We all did.”
“The Iron Claw” is about sports, and clearly stars Efron and White spent time in the gym to prepare for their shirtless bouts in the ring, but like all good sports movies it isn’t about the sport. It’s about the universal subjects of tragedy, brotherhood, brawn and bullies. The backdrop may be unusual, but anyone who has ever been browbeaten by a bully will find notes that resonate in the Von Erich story.
At the heart of the film are Efron and White as sons Kevin and Kerry. Both hand in performances etched by their physicality but deepened by the emotional turmoil that envelopes each character.
Efron digs deep in a career best performance. As Kevin watches his family fall apart, he slips into a depression, afraid that the curse is real and may affect his own wife (Lily James) and kids. For such a physical film, it’s internal work that reveals a well of emotion and sublimated anger underneath the character’s bulky frame.
White has a showier role, but as Kerry, the son who pays a huge personal price for wanting to please his overbearing father at any cost, he is more outward in his reactions to the story’s twists, but the sadness he carries with him is palpable.
Maura Tierney does a lot with little as mother Doris Von Erich. A stoic figure, when her buried feelings threaten to overflow, the look on her face has such quiet intensity it speaks louder than words.
McCallany has a much larger role. He is the catalyst, the bully who pushed his sons toward the ring by any means necessary. He’s the movie’s obvious boogeyman. Trouble is, the family can’t see it until it is too late.
“The Iron Claw” is a slow moving, somber movie that looks beyond the ring to focus on the price this family paid for success.
Heartwarming is not a word often used to describe movies based on the Vietnam War, but “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” is no “The Deer Hunter,” “Platoon” or “Apocalypse Now.” It’s an occasionally glib, often naïve movie that studies the timely issue of the gap between the press and the public, and the horrors of war.
“Green Book” director Peter Farrelly presents another hard-to-believe-it’s-true story set during the height of the Vietnam War in 1967.
Zac Efron plays an aimless, but well-meaning Merchant Marine named John “Chickie” Donohue, a playful patriot who accepts a dare from the guys at his local NYC bar to track down his army buddies in Vietnam and deliver good old American beer to them as a thanks for their service.
“It’s not going to be easy,” he says, “but I’m going to show them that this country is still behind them.”
With a duffle bag full of Pabst Blue Ribbon, he makes his way into the heart of the conflict, hanging out with hardnosed war correspondents like Arthur Coates (Russell Crowe) and getting in over his head, but nonetheless, handing out “sudsy thank you cards” to soldiers on the front lines.
At the heart of the film is Efron in his meatiest role in years. His eager performances matches the tone of the film. He’s a charismatic actor who plays up Chickie’s good-natured, guileless side. Even as the weight of the war bears down on him, he’s still tossing chilly PBRs to his buds with a grin. He’s fine, but his trip to Vietnam feels more like a goofy—but dangerous— adventure and not a serious journey of self-discovery. He does find his way to a new understanding of the world, but the movie meanders along the way to revealing his enlightenment.
“The Greatest Beer Run Ever” is a Vietnam War movie with a twist. A story of loyalty and friendship, it comes with good intentions, even if it leans into its crowd-pleasing aspects a little too heavily.
It’s unclear whether or not a remake of the blistering 1984 Stephen King movie “Firestarter” is a burning concern for audiences, but here we are with a new version of an old story, in theatres now, about a young girl with pyrokinesis.
All parents think their child is special, but Andy (Zac Efron) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon) truly know their daughter has a gift. “You’re going to change the world,” he tells her.
Years ago, Andy and Vicky were injected with an experimental serum whose side effect left them with telepathic abilities, which they passed down to the daughter Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) along with the talent for conjuring up heat and fire when angry or in pain.
For a decade they have been on the run from a secret government agency who wants to kidnap Charlie and study her superhuman power. Up until now they have trained the preteen to control her fiery ability, but as she grows up it becomes harder and harder to manage. “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Charlie says, “but it feels kind of good.”
When the family’s location is accidentally revealed, a mysterious government operative (Michael Greyeyes) is sent to bring her in as Andy and Charlie look for sanctuary.
The big question about “Firestarter 2.0” is whether or not it improves on the 1984 original. That movie was unfavorably compared to “The Fury,” a 1978 Brian De Palma film that treads, more successfully, similar ground. Looking back now, the original “Firestarter” isn’t a great movie but it does have George C. Scott in full-on menacing mode and a cool soundtrack from Tangerine Dream amid the flames and fire.
Does the new movie bring the heat?
In another cinematic multiverse (which is o-so-hip right now) Charlie could have been a member of the X-Men Jr. or the Preteen Fantastic Four, so it makes sense, particularly in today’s superhero happy market, that the new movie leans into the science fiction and allegorical aspects of the story over the horror. It’s just too bad it doesn’t do much with either approach. Charlie spits fire, and things burn but, cinematically, nothing really catches fire.
The paranoiac feel of government interference is gone, replaced by long boring stretches of exposition and Greyeyes’ underused villain. Set to an interesting score by legendary director John Carpenter (with Cody Carpenter and Daniel A. Davies), who was supposed to helm the original film, the new version gets the soundtrack right, but most everything else feels like a backfire, rather than a “Firestarter.”
If Wolverine had been around in the 1840s P.T. Barnum would have made him a star. As “The Greatest Showman” tells us, the inventor of the modern circus sought out “unique persons and curiosities” to build a show that lasted for 143 years. After nine movies as the cigar-smoking X-Man Hugh Jackman now dons the ringmaster’s trademarked top hat to tell the tale of an American institution.
We first meet the future impresario as the young son of an impoverished tailor. When he makes the daughter of one of his father’s rich patrons laugh, it is love at first sight. Cut to a song or two and many years later, Barnum (now played by Jackman) is grown up with a head full of dreams, a houseful of children and a happy marriage to his childhood sweetheart Charity (Michelle Williams). What he doesn’t have is a viable career.
Fired from a job as an accountant, he packs up his desk, taking his ledger, pens and a packet of worthless deeds to sunken ships. Using those certificates he secures a $10,000 loan to start his first business, The Barnum Museum, complete with wax sculptures, stuffed animals and a thief-turned-magician named O’Malley. “People are fascinated by the exotic and the macabre,” he says.
He has trouble selling tickets until his daughters make a suggestion. “You need something sensational,” they say, “like a mermaid or unicorn. Something alive, not stuffed.” He doesn’t round up any mermaids or unicorns but does assemble a bearded lady (Keala Settle), trapeze artists (Zendaya and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), tattooed men, Dog-faced boys, Irish giants (Radu Spinghel) and Siamese twins.
Critic James Gordon Bennett (Paul Sparks), denounces the show as exploitation. “It’s a circus,” he raves. “The word you used to describe my show has a nice ring to it,” says Barnum and the concept of the contemporary circus was born.
Money poured in but respect did not. “My father was treated like dirt,” says the so-called “purveyor of the obscene and indecent.” “I was treated like dirt. My daughters won’t be treated like dirt.” In an attempt to court a more upscale crowd he brings on socialite and actor Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron). Carlyle, when he isn’t pining for acrobat Anne Wheeler (Zendaya), sets up shows for Queen Victoria and introduces Barnum to opera singer Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson). Dubbed the Swedish Nightingale, she is the biggest singing star in Europe, and Barnum almost goes bankrupt trying to make her a sensation in America.
It isn’t until he rediscovers his roots—and the virtues of performing under a tent—that he makes a lasting impression.
“The Greatest Showman” is a period piece but pulsates with the rhythms of contemporary music. Songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who took home as Oscar last year for their work on “La La Land,” provide a timeless score that rings with the brassiness of present-day Broadway. It feels slightly strange, although no more strange than people suddenly bursting into song while traipsing down the street. The songs are catchy and the loose-limbed contemporary choreography would likely have caused riots in 1845.
As the flamboyant huckster who craves legitimacy Jackman returns to his musical theatre roots, handing in a performance that wouldn’t be out of place on the Broadway stage. The flimsy-ish story doesn’t give him much opportunity to really dig deep into what made Barnum tick. The genial actor, however, in a bigger-than-life performance, brings the rags to riches tale if not to vivid life, at last to tuneful life.
More interesting is the film’s subtext. It’s an American success story writ large but beyond that are comments on equality and bigorty. Despite advertising his menagerie of performers as a freak show we’re told Barnum saw his circus as a celebration of humanity in all its forms. The movie favours uplift and inspiration over deep insight, but its harmonious pop psychology will make your feet tap.
The message of tolerance is central to the plot, reinforced by the Carlyle, Wheeler romance. The upper crust actor and the African American acrobat are drawn to one another despite societal the norms of the day. When his father scolds him, reminding him to remember his place he snaps back, “If this is my place I don’t want it.” As Barnum reaches for the gold, turning his back on his family and ‘freaks,’ Carlyle walks away from his privilege, following his heart.
With that in mind it’s a shame that the move doesn’t give its marginal characters more of a voice. The Bearded Lady, the Dog Faced Boy and others are more or less treated on film as Barnum treated them in life, as set dressing and not much more.
“The Greatest Showman” seems to have taken its lead from its subject and delivered a movie in which every number is a showstopper. It’s a rollercoaster of story and music that occasionally moves too fast but delivers enough thrills along the way to be worth the price of admission. Maybe that’s enough. As Barnum himself said, “The noblest art is that of making others happy.”
On the surface “Baywatch,” the big screen reboot of the cheesy 1980s television show, is about beach bunnies who uncover a criminal plot that may bring with it trouble to the Baywatch lifeguards. That’s the logline, but in reality it’s actually about nostalgia, hard beach bodies and the inestimable charisma of its star (and possible presidential candidate) Dwayne Johnson.
Johnson takes over for TV lifeguard David Hasselhoff as Californian Mitch Buchannon, the gung ho leader of the elite Baywatch lifeguard squad. “Our team is the elite of the elite,” he says. “The heart and soul of the beach.” He’s a beach superstar, so beloved people curve giant sand sculptures in his honour. He keeps the waters safe but there is trouble brewing.
The Bay isn’t drawing them in like it used to and City Council has cut their funding. To stir up some publicity, and perhaps attract a few more bikini clad sunbathers, beach bigwig Captain Thorpe (Rob Huebel) hires troubled Olympian Matt Brody (Zac Efron). He’s the “Stephen Hawking of swimming” with two gold medals but he’s also a troublemaker on probation.
“That’s why we can afford him,” says Thorpe. “We got him on his community service.”
Brody butts heads with the Baywatch team—Stephanie Holden (Ilfenesh Hadera), Summer Quinn (Alexandra Daddario), Ronnie Greenbaum (Jon Bass) and CJ Parker (Kelly Rohrbach)—but especially Buchannon. The new guy may be one of the best swimmers in the world but he’s a loner and doesn’t play well with the team. “He’s reckless and insubordinate,” says Buchannon.
Despite their differences when they aren’t rescuing people from the briny depths the team is forced to come together to uncover a nefarious plot by businesswoman Victoria Leeds (Priyanka Chopra) to privatise the entire bay. “I’m not a Bond villain,” she coos. “Yet.”
Cue the wet and wild action.
“Baywatch” is one of the most popular TV shows of all time and it wasn’t because it was a searing examination of the human experience, tinted with dollops of wry humour or shrewdly pointed satire. It was because it featured SloMo teen dreams come to life, cleavage galore and cheesy action. The movie is a bigger budget version of the same. There’s no real stakes. We know things will get damp and dangerous for Mitch and Company but by the time the end credits roll everything will have sorted itself out and a sequel will be firmly in place. There’s plenty of action, gunfire and juggernauting jet skies but no jeopardy of any kind, just a generic crime story dressed up in a skimpy bathing suit.
Beyond the sea bound action is a crude sense of fun. The big screen “Baywatch” pokes gentle fun at its small screen sibling. “Why does she always looks like she’s running in slow motion?” asks new recruit Summer of CJ’s beach gait. “Do you see it too?” replies Ronnie. As the action bounces along the dumb and/or gross jokes begin to pile up threatening to crush the whole thing under their weight.
Johnson brings muscle and comic timing while Efron brings abs of steel and a willingness to do almost anything for a laugh. He doesn’t always hit the mark but you have to give him high marks for leaving his dignity at the door.
The supporting cast aren’t given much to do other than glam it up—in the party scenes—or strip down—in the beach scenes. Kelly Rohrbach it’s time for your (cleavage’s) close up. You get the idea. As the overweight and eager Ronnie, Bass is Josh Gadd Lite or maybe an echo of early Jack Black.
Depending on your point of view “Baywatch” is either a mindless summer diversion or a continuation of Hollywood’s exploitation of our collective nostalgia. Judge your interest level accordingly. Either way it fails to grab the raucous good times of “21 Jump Street,” another, more successful TV reboot.
I have a brother but he’s not my bro, at least by the contemporary definition. My sibling and I are biologically brothers but neither of us fall into what the NPR Codeswitch blog described as the four rudimentary characteristics of “bro-iness”— jockish, dudely, stoner-ish and preppy.
There are as many ways to define bros and brahs as there are bros and brahs at your local frat house. Oxford Dictionary writer Katherine Connor Martin sums it up simply as “a conventional guy’s guy who spends a lot of time partying with other young men like himself.” The urban dictionary isn’t quite as elegant, describing bros as ”obnoxious partying males who are often seen at college parties… [standing] around holding a red plastic cup waiting for something exciting to happen so they can scream something that demonstrates how much they enjoy partying”
This weekend Zac Efron and Adam DeVine play brothers who are also bros in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Based on the real-life exploits of Mike and Dave Stangle, the guys get out-broed at their sister’s Hawaiian wedding by broettes Tatiana and Alice (Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick).
In real life Mike, Dave, Tatiana and Alice are the kind of people it might be fun to hang out with before ten o’clock at night, before the tequila shots and samplings from the mystery medicine cabinet have taken effect. After that, all bets are off. Luckily in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, like so many bro movies before it, the screen separates us and we can sit back and observe them like cultural anthropologists, as if we’re studying animals in a zoo.
Hollywood has long had a bromance with bros. Lately in movies like Neighbors and Dirty Grandpa Efron has made a career of playing dim witted frat boys but to find the proto bros you have to go back to 1940. Starting with Road to Singapore Bob Hope and Bing Crosby cocktailed and adlibbed their way through seven Road movies playing two slightly skeezy men with boatloads of bravado and an unbreakable bond—at least until love interest Dorothy Lamour showed up.
National Lampoon’s Animal House was the next landmark of bro-cinema. From toga parties to food fights and doing The Worm on the dance floor, it’s a politically incorrect classic that celebrates the best and worst of bro culture.
A 1996 movie gave us the bro with a million catchphrases like “Vegas, baby,” “wingman,” “beautiful babies” and “you’re so money.” As Trent in Swingers Vince Vaughn gave a voice and brocabulary to a generation of bros. Jon Favreau wrote the script but many of the sayings came directly from the lips of his best friends and co-stars Vaughn and Ron Livingston.
No look at bro-cinema would be complete without a nod toward Will Ferrell. The comedian has broed out on screen many times but Old School’s Frank the Tank, a character who unravels after his wife leaves him, is King Bro. When he’s not doing beer bong hits (“Once it hits your lips, it’s so good!”) or streaking he lets his freak flag fly as one of the most over-the-top bros ever seen on screen.
Dean Wormer’s classic scolding from Animal House, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son,” doesn’t seem to apply, at least at the movies.
In “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates” Dave and Mike Stangle (Zac Efron and Adam DeVine), brothers who are also “bros,” get out bro’d by two unlikely people. Based on the memoir of the same name (with the subtitle “And a Thousand Cocktails”) by the real-life Stangle brothers, the movie co-stars broettes Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick.
The kind hearted but dimwitted Mike and Dave like to party. Hard. They make a living in the ultimate bro profession—tequila sales—but it’s in their off hours that they really let it rip. Their “Jackass” style exploits, including fireworks mishaps, a trampoline incident at cousin Rachel’s wedding and instigating grandfather’s bad fall, have ruined more than one family gathering. In short they are troublemakers, but to be fair, they like to think of themselves as “party creators.”
To prevent them from putting a stain on their sister Jeanie’s (Sugar Lyn Beard) Hawaiian wedding their parents insist they bring dates. ‘We don’t want you showing up stag and riling each other up,” says Burt Stangle (Stephen Root). “You to show up stag, hit on girls and ruin everything.” To find the perfect dates the guys go big when their craigslist “free trip to Hawaii” ad goes viral racking up 6000 responses in no time flat, and earning them a spot on on The Wendy Williams Show. “We’re looking for nice girls. Girls that our mom and sister would like.”
At home, in their filthy rat hole apartment two broke girls named Tatiana (Plaza) and Alice (Kendrick) are watching on television. “Let’s make these guys take us to Hawaii.” Cleaned up, the porn-loving, self-described “shoplifting floozie-ass bimbos” engineer a meeting and convince Mike and Dave to take them to their sister’s destination wedding. In Hawaii Tatiana and Alice show their true colours and leave a trail of chaos and destruction in their wake before the four young people have an epiphany and attempt to leave their bad behaviour behind.
In real life Mike, Dave, Tatiana (Plaza) and Alice are the kind of people it might be fun to hang out with before ten o’clock at night, before the tequila shots and samplings from the mystery medicine cabinet have taken effect. After that, all bets are off. On film their inane conduct and silly slapstick is a fast, funny way to spend ninety minutes. In real life their self-absorbed, co-dependent behaviour would be off-putting in the extreme. Luckily in “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates” the screen separates us and we can sit back and observe them like cultural anthropologists, as if we’re studying animals in a zoo.
Of all the cast it is Plaza who fully embraces the Tucker Max-isms on display. Her unhinged dead-eyed glare is simultaneously hilarious and disturbing. Her Tatiana is damaged goods and knows it, flaunts it even. Plaza is also funny and in a very silly movie hands in a very smart performance.
“Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates” is cut from the same cloth as “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell,” but with the addition of heart and soul. It’s the kind of millennial movie that you doesn’t want you to laugh, it wants you to lol.
When we last saw thirty-something new parents Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly (Rose Byrne) they had just called a truce in a Hatfield and McCoy’s style feud with their unruly Delta Psi frat boy neighbours led by Teddy (Zac Efron) and Pete (Dave Franco).
Time has moved on.
Mac and Kelly have happily figured out how to balance fun and parenthood but Teddy is struggling to find his place. The final straw? He realizes he is the oldest Abercrombie & Fitch employee by six years. He finds purpose when he joins forces with party animal and grrrl power advocate Shelby (Chloë Grace Moretz) who brings him back to the scene of his greatest work—right next door to Mac and Kelly—to liven things up at her newly formed Kappa Nu sorority. “I have finally found something I am good at,” says Teddy.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or so the old saying goes. In the case of “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” the title and party animal gender has changed but everything else is pretty much identical to the first movie. There are sex toy jokes, loud parties, elaborate plans to put an end to the partying and even an air bag gag or two. The familiar elements raise a laugh or two and even made me slap my knee a couple of times, but the thing that makes “Neighbors 2” worth a look isn’t Efron’s abs, which are on ample display, but the relationships between the main cast.
Rogen and Byrne have the easy, kooky camaraderie of a long time couple. Individually they are funny, but together they radiate humour and warmth, even when they’re talking about being horrible parents to their two-year-old child.
That likeability trickles down to the supporting cast. Selby, Teddy, Ike (Ike Barinholtz) and Paula (Carla Gallo) may do ill-advised things—Selby comes just this side of kidnapping and Ike gets REALLY high at a party—but they aren’t terrible people. Just folks placed in extraordinary situations. When it comes right down to it they all do more or less the right thing. That kind-and-gentle approach is a change from Rogen’s earlier shock-and-awe films but doesn’t diminish the laughs.
“Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” isn’t quite as funny as the first time, but it’s genial just as good neighbours should be.
