‘Dicks: The Musical’: Toronto Review

Dir: Larry Charles. US. 2023. 86mins

Hoping to infuriate religious conservatives, homophobes and anyone else who might be easily offended, Dicks: The Musical is a very fun romp that runs out of steam long before it reaches an appropriately sacrilegious ending. Adapting their off-off-Broadway theatre piece for the big screen, writers and composers Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp star as misogynistic alpha-males who discover they’re twin brothers, prompting them to reunite their divorced parents for the first time in decades. Director Larry Charles emphasises the knowingly cheap production values and creaky musical tropes, crafting a song-studded queer film that satirises musicals and toxic masculinity with equal gusto. The picture’s initial comic energy proves hard to sustain even with a short runtime, though, as the jokes start to feel strained and the numbers grow uninspired. 

Expect Dicks to be embraced as a cult classic in due course, especially by LGBTQ audiences. 

After its premiere in Toronto’s Midnight Madness section, Dicks will open in the US on September 29. Fans of irreverent musical theatre will be first in line, and a supporting cast that includes Megan Mullaly and Nathan Lane should help boost visibility. The film’s outrageous, proudly vulgar humour may hurt its chances for mainstream crossover, but regardless, expect Dicks to be embraced as a cult classic in due course, especially by LGBTQ audiences. 

This contemporary, New York-set comedy introduces us to Trevor (Jackson) and Craig (Sharp), utterly confident womaniseers who correctly believe that the world is theirs. Both top salesmen at the same company, they meet for the first time when their branches merge, quickly deducing that they are identical twins, separated at birth. (An indication of Dicks’ snarky humour is that the two actors don’t look much alike, but God, played by Bowen Yang, demands that we just go with it.) Each has been raised raised by only one parent, and they conspire to get their mother Evelyn (Mullally) and dad Harris (Lane) together so that they all can finally be a family.

Charles (Borat) emphasises the film’s utter artificiality, whether it’s through horribly dated establishing shots of New York City or in Steve Wolff’s threadbare production design, which emulates the “Let’s put on a show!” naivety and enthusiasm of high school theatre. The shabby quality of characters’ wigs is commented upon, and one of the film’s best sight gags, which is too good to spoil, involves hilariously cheap-looking puppets who will inexplicably become vital to the plot. 

By comparison, the songs in Dicks are quite strong, featuring sturdy melodies and clever lyrics from co-writers Jackson, Sharp and Karl Saint Lucy. Unfortunately, the film is front-loaded with the best musical moments, which adds to the sense of diminishing returns as this 86-minute picture begins to sputter. But in the early stages, the gleeful mocking of entitled straight white men is quite fetching.

Playing the estranged parents, Mullaly and Lane are certainly spirited, showing off their theatrical flair with big performances and robust singing. But their characters are disappointingly one-note: Mullaly plays a “wacky” older woman losing her mind, while Harris now sleeps with men — which is but one revelation his mediocre centrepiece song doesn’t do enough to capitalise upon. In its second half, Dicks shifts away from the twins and more towards the parents, and these veteran stage actors are forced to ham it up since the material isn’t suitably funny - no matter the gusto they bring to it.

As the film begins, the audience is informed that Jackson and Sharp are gay men playing straight characters, sarcastically praised for how “brave” they are. It’s an early clue that Dicks isn’t just targeting anti-LGBTQ sentiments in society but also the ways in which Hollywood showers accolades on itself for the faintest hints of diversity it allows in its movies. That said, the film is largely out to incite conservative watchdogs who will presumably be aghast seeing images of, say, flying vaginas or considering the possibility that God might be homosexual. (Yang plays the divine being as flagrantly flamboyant.) 

But Dicks’ celebration of individuality and sexual freedom ultimately feels less triumphant than it does button-pushing, taunting the sort of uptight viewers who would probably never seek out (or even be aware of) this musical. As a result, sympathetic audiences who will be on the picture’s side from the start may find the proceedings a little too smug and repetitive — it’s not so much transgressive as it is preaching to the choir. To be sure, there are some wonderfully bizarre laughs in store, and Jackson and Sharp’s coy impression of patriarchal, heteronormative behaviour is a treat. Still, for a satire that relishes teasing men’s fervent desire to demonstrate their sexual potency, it’s a shame Dicks eventually starts to wilt.