‘Dicks: The Musical’ Review: A Naughty Bawdy Gaudy Sporty Musical Comedy Out That Alphas the Alphas | Toronto

It can be simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting to watch a film that is so thoroughly on its own wavelength that you have to either get on top and ride it or pull out. Such is the case with Dicks: The Musical, a truly gonzo musical comedy adaptation of The Parent Trap that is almost certainly the most bizarre film being released by a major independent studio (A24) this year. Adapted by Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp from their off-off-off-off Broadway cult musical Fucking Identical Twins, Dicks is a concentrated blast of pure theater kid energy, the most gleefully profane, batshit insane movie musical since Trey Parker and Matt Stone went to Broadway. The amount of creativity on display is truly exciting, as the film goes on some wild detours unlike anything else you’ve ever seen, but its genuine unpredictability and rapid-fire raunchy humor can be exhausting if you’re not on the film’s wavelength. Thankfully, the first-time screenwriters managed to land a genuine comedy legend to direct, and Larry Charles (Borat) proves to be the best possible choice to shepherd the film from a Gristede’s basement to the big screen, ensuring that even at its most out-there, everything feels unified.

Craig (Sharp) and Trevor (Jackson) are identical twin brothers – so what if they don’t look alike, “Fuck you, they are,” says Bowen Yang as the film’s narrator, God (yes, THAT God). They have the same job, live in the same city, and have the same massive heterosexual sex drive. But something is missing: Neither of them have a family, having been raised by a single, very eccentric parent. After they get merged into the same company they realize that their parents separated them at birth, and concoct a plan to get them back together so that they can finally have the family they’ve each always dreamed of. The only problems are that mother Evelyn (Megan Mullally), whose vagina has detached itself from her body, refuses to leave her house, and father Harris, who is obsessed with his pet “sewer boys,”, has come out as gay. How will Craig and Trevor get them married again? And which one of the brothers will be able to claim the title of top company salesman?

When your film is as unhinged as something like this is, you need to get the audience in the proper frame of mind right off the bat, and Dicks does that with some onscreen text making sure the audience knows that the leading roles of the heterosexual brothers will be played by homosexual actors. “This is, of course, brave,” the text insists, and if the obvious satire of that statement doesn’t hit your funny bone in the right way, it may be best to check out right then and there, because the humor only gets stupider, weirder, and more absurd from there. The opening number establishing who the brothers are is a ribald romp through their daily lives that includes so many visual jokes to accompany the hilarious lyrics that you may miss a lot of them. While the humor definitely leans very heavily on just throwing out the most random/absurd thing possible, it doesn’t overly rely on that, finding as many ways as possible to make as many jokes as possible. It’s very rare for films these days to have an absurdist streak this wide, and that  often makes Dicks as unpredictable to watch as it is fun.

The other thing ensuring that the film is so much fun to watch is the cast. Yang is a hoot as the very pro-gay God, and Megan Thee Stallion is a ball of bad-bitch charisma in a supporting role as the twins’ boss – it’s impossible to look at anything else when she’s onscreen. As the leads, Sharp and Jackson bring over-the-top “look at me, Mom!” theater kid energy that is vital to the success of the film’s tone, but Dicks desperately needed two musical comedy pros playing their parents, and they could hardly have gotten better ones. Evelyn and Harris are largely just a bunch of eccentricities piled on top of each other, but Mullally and Lane play them as real, soulful kooks, making us feel for these weirdos. As always, both of them have flawless comic timing and are fully committed to the bit, no matter how ridiculous. Mullally looks and sounds like she’s from a whole other planet, with a vocal performance that is indescribably odd. Lane, on the other hand, presents Harris as more grounded in reality, but the things he says and does are so ridiculous that it’s clear he’s not all here, either. He’s also aided by some truly skin-crawling puppets as his beloved “sewer boys”, tiny sewer-dwelling creatures that Harris keeps as pets, feeding them deli ham that he chews up and spits out for them. It’s one of the most grossly hilarious images of the year in a film that’s downright overflowing with them.

While much of the credit for Dicks: The Musical’s delightfully profane imagery goes to original writer-performers Sharp and Jackson, it becomes abundantly clear very early on that the film owes most of its success as a comedy to director Larry Charles. The veteran director knows how to make even the wildest, wackiest comedy stick, and perhaps more importantly knows exactly how much a film can take before it becomes too much. His skill is evident in every moment, embracing the material’s collegiate musical parody-style roots but never letting it feel too juvenile. Make no mistake, there are lots of fart jokes, sex jokes, and other types of jokes that feel catered to the teenage boys inside all of us, but in Charles’s hands, they all feel purposeful, a satire of so-called Alpha Males that highlights how silly their mindset is by heightening the juvenile aspects of it. Other running gags that also feel a little too stupid to work on paper – Harris’s sewer boys, Evelyn’s vagina – end up working because Chalres taps into an element of gross-out horror that makes the film as a whole feel even more unique. He also lends the film a hand-crafted, almost DIY quality that heightens the parodic elements that, along with the go-for-broke performances, adds an infectious charm to the film. It’s clear that this was a labor of love for all involved, and while the obviously reused sets, technical mistakes, and character breaks can detract from the film in moments, they end up becoming part of the film’s charm.

In the end, that charm is what ends up carrying Dicks. The film is immensely charming, emanating an eagerness to entertain by any means necessary. It may be deeply disturbed, deliriously deranged, and even downright disgusting, but it’s exceedingly rare that a film this singular in its point of view and style gets made, let alone receives this kind of release. That it’s so confident in itself is impressive, if not exactly surprising, given how out-there it is; if you’re going to go this big, you gotta go all in. Dicks: The Musical doesn’t hesitate, and even saves its boldest, zaniest joke for last, going out with a blast of joy that doubles down on all its most notable qualities. It may not be a great film, but a lot of people are going to love it just for its willingness to go where so few films dare to go, and in the film’s own words, “all love is gross, but all love is love!”

Grade: B

This review is from the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. A24 will release Dicks: The Musical only in theaters on September 29, 2023.