DICKS: THE MUSICAL - Mark Reviews Movies

Dicks: The Musical, A24

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 19, 2023

Dicks: The Musical revolves around separated-at-birth twin brothers who look nothing alike—despite what God, who is a character in this story, may say—and their quirky parents and a pair of sewer monsters that one of the parents seems to love more than either human child. To say that this is a weird movie is an understatement, but that's what is so admirable about the best elements of co-writers/co-stars Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp's musical creation.

One could know exactly what will happen in the story and still be surprised by how it unfolds. There are only a few rules here, which is a freeing experience, but the rules that are present make it a frustrating one, too.

The movie is an adaptation of Jackson and Sharp's two-person off-Broadway musical, which doesn't have the same title. The title of the stage show will go unmentioned here, partly so that the curious can discover it for themselves but mostly because it's a bit of spoiler for the story's final turn—to the extent that something so strange and seemingly random can be spoiled, that is.

It's tough to say that ultimate revelation actually works, except as a meta-level joke about the fact that the two actors clearly aren't twin siblings and how musicals often end with a happy tune that leaves one feeling as if there's been more to it than just singing and dancing. It doesn't matter how terrible things have gone for the characters, as long as the audience leaves humming or singing the final number on the way to the lobby. Here, one can imagine the confused or shocked looks if anyone leaving this movie walks around singing the chorus of this last song.

Indeed, it's difficult to determine who the target audience of this movie is intended to be, but that's not a criticism. To watch it is to feel an increasingly giddy sense that anything could happen, that no cliché of the musical is too precious to mock, and that the sight and sound of Nathan Lane singing about, explaining the origins of, and tending to a pair of monstrous puppets is about as hilarious as a completely random joke can be. The absurdity of it all only makes the filmmakers' attempts to make the material make any kind of sense all the more disappointing.

The plot, such as it is, has Sharp's Craig and Jackson's Trevor, the aforementioned twins who were separated at birth and know nothing of each other's existence, living very similar lives. They're womanizers, a joke informed by some opening text announcing that both Sharp and Jackson are gay and "bravely" playing heterosexual men, and obsessed with sex—an obsession only rivaled by an infatuation with their own penises and being the best salesmen of robotic vacuum parts in New York City. There's even a song about that, and yes, that means there's a ditty about casual sex, their penises, and even the company selling the components—and only the components—of those vacuums.

Anyway, they meet when Craig—or maybe Trevor, since even the movie and the characters in it start to forget who's who, despite not looking at all like each other—starts working at company headquarters, where Trevor (probably) is the top salesperson. Soon enough, they realize they're twins and come up with a scheme to get their parents to reunite and remarry, so that they can both get the one thing they've never possessed and always wanted: a family.

It's pretty straightforward, except that the parents are, well, very strange people. A joke as one-note as that threatens to run dry quickly, except that the parents are played by Lane and Megan Mullally. As Evelyn, Mullally puts on an unrecognizable accent and a non-specific speech impediment that should be irritating but that become endearing, simply because the actor finds some kind of inexplicable consistency to the gag. There's no consistency to the character, mind you, whose quirks include having relationships with various knickknacks in her apartment and the loss of a certain body part, apparently by its own sentient will, that would pretty firmly attached.

As for Lane, he takes a more deadpan approach to Harris, the father, who does have those two creatures—the "Sewer Boys," as he warmly calls them—and reveals to the son he has never known, disguised as the other one, that he's gay. Obviously, the brothers' plan can't work, but they have developed a shared philosophy of never giving up when someone tells them no. Just like that final song, the one describing that belief has people ignoring what's being said and joining in the singing-and-dancing fun, if only because that, apparently, is what people in the background of a musical do.

As those songs and the mostly-played-straight plot continue, though, it's most difficult to tell if the joke has run its course or if Jackson and Sharp are too indebted to the concept of the musical to really do anything revolutionary within it, besides filling it with various oddities. It would be unfair to call Dicks: The Musical too safe, considering the absurdist and subversive humor driving it, but after a certain point, the movie's reliance on formula in so many of its goals and so much of its construction certainly makes it feel that way.

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