All you need to know about Dicks: The Musical is telegraphed by its title. The Larry Charles-directed movie musical is all too proud to shout (sing!) from the rooftops that it’s a cheekily immature proposition, one intent on getting you to snicker at its lowbrow, balls to the wall humor. Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp, adapting and expanding their two-man show into a feature-length film that’ll no doubt serve as their calling card for years to come, have created a fully bonkers riff on The Parent Trap that needs to be seen to be believed.
Jackson and Sharp play Trevor Brock and Craig Tittle, two cocksure heterosexual professionals who love boasting about how much they rule (in bed, at work, in life) in songs that play as loving pastiches of musical tunes you’ll be discouraged from taking too seriously. Trevor and Craig soon become each other’s nemesis as they compete to be the top vacuum salesman and win the graces of their no-nonsense boss, Gloria (Megan Thee Stallion, having fun in her first feature film role). But wait there’s more! Midway through singing about their respectively dour childhoods (with a single dad for one, a single mom for the other) Trevor and Craig realize they are, in their own words “fucking identical twins.” No matter that Jackson and Sharp make no attempt to look alike (or fit the straight-acting roles they’ve created for one another). That’s but one of the many gambles the film takes once the twins band together to reunite their parents, played by comedic geniuses Megan Mullally (with a literal funny lisp) and Nathan Lane (with a figural limp wrist).
Following the wacky shenanigans that characterized both the 1961 Haley Mills comedy Parent Trap and its 1998 Lindsay Lohan remake—where two young girls collude to get their mom and dad back together—Dicks revels in the absurdity of having two cocky and very straight grown men attempting the same. Add in the fact that Lane’s Harris has long realized he’s attracted to men (and has since adopted two rat-looking creatures he adoringly calls his Sewer Boys, whom he feeds by spitting into their mouths) and that Mullally’s Evelyn has long ago lost her vagina (which fell out, thus making her even more of a recluse who talks with the many tchotchkes she keeps around her home) and you have the making of a deliriously outrageous comedy.
If such descriptions have not yet dissuaded you from checking out Dicks: The Musical, you may find plenty to enjoy in Sharp and Jackson’s deranged brain child. Where else will you find Megan Thee Stallion rapping verses like “Y’all are just servants/This is my palace/Built it brick by brick/So get it in line/Drop to your knees, and suck my fucking dick”? Or witness Mullally and Lane reminding us why they remain some of the most committed comedic actors around by creating the most acrobatically choreographed make-up sex at a restaurant you can imagine? Or watch SNL breakout star Bowen Yang get his own Alanis-in-Dogma moment by playing an aggressively flamboyant gay god?
All this is to say that Dicks: The Musical knows exactly what it is. With its brightly colored soundstage sets (always fun to see California mountains in scenes ostensibly taking place on New York City streets) and catchy if brazenly NSFW songs (see: Stallion’s “Out-Alpha the Alpha”), Sharp and Jackson bring their improv comedy sensibility to the big screen with aplomb. Some may revel in its manic musical theater camp (and capital C campy) energy but the shtick runs itself into the ground even before the queered final act reveal turns its subtext into explicit (and graphic) text fitting of its racy title.
This is as broad as comedies get these days. But its shock-and-awe sensibility is somewhat exhausting. Part of this has to do with the relentless rhythm of its exposition (and humor). No sooner has one zinger or sight gag or foul-mouthed lyric landed than Sharp and Jackson throw another one our way. Such frenetic pacing has the effect of making the often hilarious Dicks: The Musical feel like a desperate song-and-dance man who’s all too afraid we’ll stop laughing altogether if he allows us to so much as gasp for air.
Dicks: The Musical opens in limited release October 6 and nationwide October 20