Dicks: The Musical (2023)
Dicks: The Musical, a title I’m not sure can be publicly displayed, isn’t as funny as it sounds. It isn’t funny at all. In fact, it’s one of the most patently unfunny films I’ve seen in quite some time. To call it bad would be paying it a compliment; it’s completely inexcusable. There’s no goal to it, except to be as vulgar, awkward, and bizarre as possible. In the course of this movie, Nathan Lane will spit chewed ham into the mouths of small monsters he has as pets, incest will be graphically depicted, and a disembodied vagina creature – with stalked eyes, no less – will use its labia to fly through the air like a butterfly. If this sounds entertaining to you … well, what can I say? There’s no accounting for taste.
It stars and was written and composed by newcomers Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp – and, of course, they adapted their own off-Broadway stage musical, whose title is even worse than the movie’s and definitely can’t be repeated here. Like Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, and anyone appearing in the early films of John Waters, neither man seems to possess the ability to be ashamed of himself, or at the very least feel embarrassed. They have decent singing voices, but what good is that when every song is filled with crude four-letter words and references to sex acts and genitalia? They seem to think it’s funny by definition that they’re gay men playing heterosexual misogynists. They also look nothing alike, yet play identical twins – who will eventually cross that most taboo of lines after waking up from nightmares in the same bed.
But I’m getting ahead of the story. Their characters, Trevor and Craig, work for a Roomba-esque company and compete for the title of top seller. They each have half of a heart-shaped locket, and soon realize they’re long lost twins who were separated at birth. Feeling their professional success came at the expense of having a family, they scheme to reunite their long-divorced parents. Similarly to the Parent Trap movies, this involves each sibling disguising himself as the other and meeting the parent they weren’t raised by. Here enters mother Evelyn (Megan Mullally) and father Harris (Lane). The former is a wheelchair-bound, lisping weirdo whose apartment is a shrine of old-lady knick knacks and flower-printed textiles. We repeatedly hear about how her vagina fell off and became a separate living entity. The latter is a stereotype of the urbane homosexual, save for the fact that he keeps two mutant sewer creatures in a cage.
Are we laughing yet? Jackson and Sharp’s sense of humor doesn’t reflect any real understanding of comedy; they’re merely acting goofy and tasteless for what seems to be their own amusement. This is most evident in their decision to include God as a character and have Bowen Yang portray Him as a flamboyant typecast, complete with a glittering suit, numerous beads and crosses around his neck, a gaudy halo, and a robe with provocative depictions of Jesus Christ. Had the goal been to genuinely satirize religion, to make a meaningful statement about Christianity’s poor track record with the LGBTQ+ community, this approach might have worked. But satire was clearly not what Jackson and Sharp had in mind; they only wanted to shock and offend for the sake of being shocking and offensive.
This should have been noticed by director Larry Charles. Until now, I had him pegged as a man who understands comedy. He did, after all, helm Borat, Brüno, and The Dictator, all side-splittingly funny, all starring Sacha Baron Cohen. These movies had very crude, very graphic scenes, some utterly jaw-dropping in their audacity. But they weren’t included just for the hell of it; Charles and Cohen wanted to make a point about the ignorance, hypocrisy, and prejudice deeply ingrained in American culture. There was an aim. Given this, I can only attribute Charles’ decision to direct Dicks to a lapse in judgment. This material is beneath him. It’s beneath everyone involved with it.
This would include Megan Thee Stallion, who plays Trevor and Craig’s boss. There was a missed opportunity, here; rather than have her rap seriously about female empowerment in the workplace, her rap is instead a ludicrous ode to the most radical fringes of feminism. Her character would have read Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto and not interpreted it as parody. And what of Nathan Lane, that accomplished actor of stage and screen? On the basis of bloopers played during the end credits of Dicks: The Musical, he was just as bewildered by his casting as I was. In the scene where he spits ham at the sewer creatures, there’s a take when he turns to the camera and muses about how embarrassing this is for him. On the one hand, I can’t blame him. On the other hand, I can. Why didn’t he say no after reading the script?
