John Cena can’t save this generic raunchy comedy.

We meet three best friends who have always gotten out of trouble, because they place the blame on Ricky Stanicky. Who is he? He doesn’t exist. If Sony Pictures can use David Manning to sell some of their movies back in the early 2000s, then why can’t these guys use Ricky to have the best years of their lives?

So why not give the new raunchy comedy the title “Ricky Stanicky?” Why not have John Cena play the title character, since there were those who enjoyed him in “Vacation Friends?” And why not make it a minstrel show for raunchy comedies? The rules: jerky best friends, idiot women, a half circumcised baby who gets finished by a cigar cutter, an actor singing masturbation songs in a club where even the customers are bored by the ambiance, and a celebrated actor who looks like he didn’t want to be a part of this.

It would make sense since the film is directed by Peter Farrelly of the Farrelly Brothers, who started his career off with comedies like “Dumb and Dumber” and “There’s Something About Mary,” and won two Oscars for “Green Book.” He can do, and the concept here is passable, but it all feels obligatory and dull.

The three friends are Dean (Zac Efron), JT (Andrew Santino), and Wes (Jermaine Fowler), and they’re in their adulthood with idiot spouses who can’t see through their rouse. They consist of Dean’s reporter girlfriend (Lex Scott Davis), whose job is to report on a duck thinking a golf ball is her egg, JT’s pregnant wife (Anja Savcic), who wishes her husband was at the hospital earlier to experience the miracle of birth (6 weeks earlier), and Wes’s partner Keith (Daniel Monks), who wishes his unemployed boyfriend would make an effort out of his life. Only JT’s mother-in-law (Heather Mitchell) is starting to catch on.

Wes feeling guilty about their lifetime lie, while Dean and JT can’t risk losing their happy lives.

Then, when Ricky is invited to JT’s baby’s bris, their only recourse is to have an actor play Ricky, and he happens to be Rod Rimestead (Cena), who is freeloader, a musician with masturbation songs, and a “trained actor,” as his business card says.

He pulls off the act at the bris, but then, a new problem emerges. Dean and JT both work for Ted Summerhayes (William H. Macy, looking like he’d rather be somewhere else), who is so impressed with how straightforward and financially intelligent Ricky is (when, in actually, he watches the news and reads Dean’s Twitter page), that he immediately hires him.

Cena has the manliness and charm to play such a guy to reshape himself, especially when he has to go through this rouse. But “Ricky Stanicky” is too lousy and unfunny to be a comedy. In fact, it feels like it should have been part of a fake trailer for a “Tropic Thunder” sequel, especially when the poster says “WARNING: AN R-RATED COMEDY” and “He’s the best friend they never had.

This movie has nothing on the outrageous funny comedies the Farrelly Brothers have made in the past, even though it’s just Peter on this one. It doesn’t even have anything on “Green Book.” I want raunchy comedies to take their vulgarity to new heights, not act like some kind of minstrel show against the genre. I don’t even think “Ricky Stanicky” knows who its target audience is.

Now Streaming on Amazon Prime Video