Dicks: The Musical (2023)

Dicks: The Musical review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

This may come as a shock to some, but the musical called Dicks is very dumb. It’s dumb in a throw-everything-at-the-screen manner with the big-theater-kid energy to carry it. It rushes face-first into the most absurd of musical numbers and vulgar developments, spanning everything from elongated sex scenes to B-movie puppets to a talking disembodied vagina. Very little of it makes sense, and every scene feels like it's grasping hard for the funniest line and delivery. On that level, it’s almost surprising how much of it works for being so bombastic.

The premise plays like a warped version of The Parent Trap. Craig and Trevor are salesmen who apparently look alike and are in strict competition at work. After some competition and odd lines of dialogue about being straight and greedy, they come to the realization that they’re estranged brothers. One of them is the son of an eccentric shut-in, Evelyn (Megan Mullally), prone to making up friends and singing about her lost memory. Another one is the son of the drunk shut-in Harris (Nathan Lane), content to drink wine and spend time with his Sewer Boys. What are the Sewer Boys? That’s a reveal so left-field weird I dare not reveal it here.

The film stars Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson, who led and wrote the original off-broadway play, Fucking Identical Twins. It has that vibe with how easily these two actors crank up the queer energy that oozes forth in the first few scenes that I doubt it would surprise anybody that these two end up having sex. There might be a hint that this isn’t happening when they discover early that they are brothers, but the presence of Sewer Boys and talking vaginas should make it clear that nothing is off-limits in this film. This should be very apparent, with the film being somewhat narrated by a gay version of God portrayed with a sharp slander by Bowen Yang.

The musical numbers are not all that memorable but fun for the vulgar material and delivery. You better believe a highly provocative song will be delivered by Megan Thee Stallion, playing the boss of Craig and Trevor. There were some smiles to be had with the duet of Megan Mullally and Nathan Lane singing about wanting to have sex again with a ludicrous dance that turns a restaurant into chaos as they do the nasty right there in the dining room. The design of the Sewer Boys being silly puppets straight out of a horror movie and the flying vagina being a weird CGI creature have a certain B-movie quality.

As the title might imply, Dicks is also a very gay film, but perhaps not in the ways that one would expect. Nathan Lane goes from gay to bi in the rekindling of his relationship, while Craig and Trevor dive face-first into gay twincest. There’s a weird protest to stop this union, but this is a film where nothing will stop something so wild. The closing song about how love is love takes on a more surreal tone in this aspect.

Dicks is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, and by that, I mean it’s going to be straight-up acid for some people. It’s a sloppy film that keeps tossing absurdity after absurdity at the wall. For all that enthusiasm, however, I must admit I laughed a lot at this film for the commitment to such a wildly stupid script. In the closing credits, a blooper reel shows Lane being expected to chew food and feed it to some puppets. Smirking while performing the bit, he turns to the camera and admits with a laugh that this might be his worst role for how silly he will look. But, you know, it takes a lot of guts to perform something so stupid as this, and I greatly appreciated that boldness, even if not all of it sticks as well as it should.