Ricky Stanicky
Brotherly filmmaker splits have not yielded tandem-topping results. I’ll cite Joel Coen’s last effort, “Drive-Away Dolls,” an inert, forced comedy still playing in theaters, and this shameless throwback from Peter Farrelly of “Dumb and Dumber” (1994) Farrelly brothers fame. That said, brother Pete did win the Best Picture Oscar for “Green Book,” his 2018 true-life depiction of a Black musician (Mahershala Ali) and his white chauffeur (Viggo Mortensen) trekking through the Civil Rights-era South. Let’s call it lightning in a bottle and move on to this wannabe. It’s not unreasonable to wonder if “Dumb and Dumber” or “There’s Something About Mary” (1998) could be made today. In spirit, perhaps, but not as was. “Stanicky” revolves around a trio of childhood friends (“High School Musical” star Zac Efron, Andrew Santino and Jermaine Fowler) who as kids deflect responsibility for a Halloween house fire by blaming it on the fictional person of the film’s title. As adults living in the same Rhode Island city (Providence, ostensibly, though the film was shot in Australia) they keep the notion of Stanicky alive so they can leave their wives and significant others to have male-bonding getaways. On one such trek to Atlantic City they encounter an alcoholic stage performer named Rod (John Cena) who does jerk-off renditions of hits by Peter Frampton, Alice Cooper, Billy Idol and Boy George in equally sophomoric costumes. The 14-year-old boy inside you will chuckle uncomfortably, but that’s not the film’s biggest sin. Cena’s broken-but-not-bowed Ron gets hired by the trio to play Stanicky at a circumcision (don’t ask). Where the film goes off key is the indulgent over-entitlement of wealthy bankers Dean (Efron) and JT (an edgy Santino) versus the sad jokes that befall their semi-employed third, Wes (Fowler) who is Black and gay – there’s one scene in which catching tossed nuts at a party is a thing, and when a way-off-the mark “nuts in the mouth” joke arrives it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. That said, Cena, so good and self-deprecating in the TV series “Peacemaker”—and no one will forget his “in the buff” Oscar appearance—does more of that goofy, nice guy/bad guy work here. He’s the epicenter of the film and a guilty pleasure to watch even if the schtick goes on too long. The affable Willam Macy is a decent add as the head of a financial management firm, but the film plays out in two halves and the second one is simply begging, boring and often in bad taste.
Escape
Two young women vacationing on a resort island (hello “Infinity Pool”) are kidnapped by a criminal organization that sex trafficks women to overseas clientele. One of the pair happens to be a prominent British socialite (Sarah Alexander Marks), and once locked up in a cell with about a dozen other lithe, young blondes, the lot comes together to hatch a scheme to break free. That includes enticing their captors with the lure of sexual favors, an impromptu repurposing of beer and wine bottles and other techniques of retaliation that made Lorena Bobbitt a household name a few decades back. In various waves the women do get free, and the baddies led by Sean Cronin – whose been a henchman or heavy in many a film, big and small – take after them as a long, bloody game of cat and mouse plays out among the craggy desert grottos on the Canary Islands. Directed by lo-fi genre filmmaker Howard J. Ford (“The Ledge,” “Never Let Go”), the flick plays like “Revenge” (2017) or “The Bad Batch” (2016) on a reduced budget – limited locales, less acting chops (though the imprisoned actresses do quite well) and a wooden script, putting it on par with the Andy Sidaris movies of the ’80s such as “Picasso Trigger.” If the film has a sheen of exploitation (it is about trafficking, right?), Ford makes sure he sets us straight; not only are the women taken against their will and imprisoned, but many are haunted by domestic traumas that they leverage for strength. The awkward flashbacks are a tad overused, but much in this rote, straight-ahead actioner is overwrought and rises seldomly above the two-dimensional.