What to make of a movie like Dicks: The Musical? On the one hand, this appropriately ridiculous (or goofy, if you will) game takes its chaotic humor further than many would dare. On the other hand, it's a surprisingly limited experience that loses steam rather quickly. Sure, these two hands come together to do a lot even though they often feel out of sync: there's delightfully strange puppetry, self-aware jokes galore, and tons of sarcasm. The problem is that even the most seemingly far-fetched premises can start to ring hollow if they're hit over and over again from the same angles.
In this case, the ones doing the beating are the duo of Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp. They are not only the writers, but they are the protagonists of this entire absurd matter. Adapted from Jackson and Sharp's off-Broadway show Fucking Identical Twins, a title whose search engine results are a joke in themselves, Dicks sees the duo adopting the same broad narrative strokes.
Director: Larry Charles
Writers: Aaron Jackson, Josh Sharp
Stars: Josh Sharp, Aaron Jackson, Nathan Lane
Partially a riff on The Parent Trap, it puts us in the shoes of totally heterosexual businessmen Craig Title (Sharp) and Trevor Brock (Jackson) living in present-day New York City. They are the best of the best at their goofy job selling only vacuum cleaner parts for their “boss,” played by a memorable if underused Megan Thee Stallion. But Craig and Trevor have begun to fear that their lives are empty. When they discover that they are actually identical twins, they decide that they will have to reunite their parents so that they can all be a happy family again.
Enter Nathan Lane as Harris and Megan Mullally as Evelyn, who have essentially locked themselves in their respective apartments. The first is not entirely alone, since he has the so-called Sewer Boys, nightmarish creatures that he feeds with his own mouth, although they are not good company. When the children impersonate others, sporting atrocious wigs to which the characters themselves repeatedly draw attention, mischief ensues. Throughout all of this, the story matters less and more than it should.
Feeling at times like it's trying to be more in line with Tom Green's misunderstood flop Freddy Got Fingered, A24's first musical stays true to its title by simply joking. Much of this is done in jest and everyone involved seemed to have a blast. But that doesn't mean the experience of watching it is. Not even Bowen Yang, as the Almighty, can save Dicks entirely.
Although Dicks was directed by Larry Charles, best known for the original Borat, Sharp and Jackson are its driving creative force. They play gloriously ridiculous material, like a dinner scene that goes off the rails and sends the audience spinning around the room. But the rest often gets dragged down by the repetitiveness that requires characters to remind us of the jokes, always making sure they don't have the intended impact.
The Sewer Boys give a glimpse of a more chaotic and complete Dicks, but it's as if we can see the strings manipulating everything else on screen. There is a lot of crude humor, but there is always a lack of creativity. Vulgarity is largely devoid of enthusiasm. While he can elicit a laugh, Dicks can't maintain the energy to get through the moments when he can't laugh. In the end, everything gets out of hand, leaving the characters sitting in the same places, going through the motions.
As their situations and scenarios become familiar, the crazy moments of chaos begin to feel trapped in the many split-screen boxes Dicks has drawn for himself. He finds more fun gained when he eliminates all of this, but still remains strangely bound. There is a bolder, more absurd beating heart in Dicks; That we only get to see it when the movie is ending is a disappointment.
Dicks finally leans into transgression, spitting with aplomb in the face of whatever rules the audience wants to impose on him. If this spirit had been felt everywhere, it could have been something great. In the execution, he commits his greatest sin: being forgettable.
Those shameless little puppets, the Sewer Boys, are sure to be something else, but it's in the rest of Dicks: The Musical where you start to see the threads. While he becomes bolder as the end of him approaches, everything that comes before is too repetitive and increasingly empty. For all the fun the cast seems to have with Dicks, his execution is never as creative as it should be. There are laughs, but the overall experience is defined by tightness rather than mischief.
Watch Dicks: The Musical 2023 Movie Trailer
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