Summary

“Dicks: The Musical” is a bizarre and outrageous film that tries too hard to be funny and ends up feeling contrived and forced. Nathan Lane and Megan Mullally deliver standout performances in a film that lacks heart and memorable songs. The movie is smarmy and exasperating, pushing boundaries without a clear direction and ultimately falling short in terms of cleverness and humor.

Sometimes a movie comes along that is so outrageous and bizarre that it’s a wonder it was ever made. Dicks: The Musical is that film. Directed by Larry Charles from a screenplay by Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp, who also wrote and starred in the off-Broadway musical the film is based on, Dicks: The Musical is weird, over the top, rarely as funny as it’s trying to be, and somewhat pretentious and very annoying. Its premise is interesting enough — it’s Parent Trap meets Broadway — but the musical is simply trying too hard to be funny, engineering its entire persona around seeing how far it can go.

Craig (Sharp) and Trevor (Jackson) are identical twins who don’t know they’ve been living in such close proximity to each other for years. They don’t meet until they start working at the same sales firm, but instead of trying to understand why they look so much alike, they compete with each other for the top sales spot while impressing their boss (Megan Thee Stallion). Realizing they’re identical twins separated by their parents, Craig and Trevor switch places to meet their father Harris (Nathan Lane), a gay man with a love for creepy sewer creatures, and eccentric mother Evelyn (Megan Mullally), whose vulva has been physically detached, while attempting to bring them back together, so they can be a “real” family. Along the way, Craig and Trevor, who sing about only understanding each other and are the ultimate dude bros, realize they’ve been gay all along.

Nathan Lane, Megan Mullally, Aaron Jackson, and Josh Sharp in Dicks: The Musical

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie that is so full of itself. Jackson and Sharp’s script is all over the place. And while the story is grounded by Craig and Trevor’s attempts to reunite their parents, everything about the film is contrived and forced. The jokes grow tired after the first ten minutes, and there’s absolutely no heart — it’s all spectacle, and a grating one at that. Dicks: The Musical’s songs, which come often, are unmemorable and there’s a sense that the musical might’ve worked better as a short film. It feels never ending as is, as well as obnoxious, and entirely too pleased with itself.

Nathan Lane and Megan Mullally are the highlights of the film. Their performances are wild and weird, but they don’t overdo it for the sake of theatricality. The material they had to work with was already enough; all they had to do was sell it, and they did. The same can’t be said for Sharp and Jackson, whose energy is at an eleven throughout. Their overzealousness needed to be reined in to be effective, and the film quickly runs out of steam despite their exuberant performances. The pair is okay when they share scenes with Lane and Mullally, but become increasingly annoying when they’re together. Even Megan Thee Stallion’s number, “Out Alpha the Alpha,” isn’t enough to keep the musical afloat, though Bowen Yang as God is delightful.

Nathan Lane and Megan Mullally in Dicks: The Musical

Dicks: The Musical is simply doing too much, and not enough of it is good to justify its runtime. It’s neither clever nor funny, save for the couple of jokes that actually land, and it’s too smarmy for its own good. Perhaps if we were in on the joke it would have been a better watching experience, but Sharp and Jackson push boundaries and go all out without any real sense of direction. Sharp and Jackson are exaggerative for the sake of gasps and shock, and the film’s ending is a testament to that which drives the film’s story. It may be a black comedy, but it’s too self-serving and exasperating to genuinely be good.

Dicks: The Musical is now playing in theaters. The film is 86 minutes long and rated R for strong crude sexual content, graphic nudity, pervasive language and brief drug use.