10 Recent Movies That Never Should've Worked (But Did)

Ricky Stanicky is a throwback to an era of comedy that many contemporary viewers have little interest in revisiting - the high-concept, gross-out comedies of the 1990s and 2000s.

Given that Dumb and Dumber director Peter Farrelly hasn't produced a good comedy movie in years, it was near-impossible to have faith in this homage to his heyday, which had enormous potential to come off as an embarrassing pining for the more politically incorrect past of Hollywood comedy. But Ricky Stanicky ultimately lands on the right side of charming, largely thanks to an unbelievably committed performance from John Cena as Rod, an actor who is hired to portray the titular fake persona invented by two friends to get them out of trouble.

It's an aggressively stuck-in-the-past film, but its deference towards nauseating sight gags and unapologetic stupidity actually proves somewhat refreshing, serving as a peer back towards a dumber, more low-effort, yet still gut-bustingly funny era of comedy. Without Cena's outstanding work, though, it wouldn't hit nearly as hard.