The first extended sequence of "Dicks: The Musical" is a memorable opening statement. True, that's the case for most movies, and exponentially more true for musicals. "Dicks" is a still-more-extreme case because it sends its two stars Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp unleashed on screen like they've each been loosed from some demented jack-in-the-box. They, like the A24-released movie they also co-wrote, make an instant impression, are unafraid to provoke, and summon deep laughs from unexpected places.
After a text prologue that proclaims "Dicks" as a straight story written by two gay men, we see the product of that cheekily self-described "bravery." Trevor Brock (Jackson) and Craig Tittle (Sharp) arrive as ultimate corporate bros, rival aspiring business execs drowning themselves in as much sex and arrogance as they can handle. A song that puffs up their insatiable ego and appetite soon gives way to the realization that these two are not just competitors at the same job. They're twins, their separate childhoods the product of a split marriage that separated them at birth.
There's an ongoing running joke about Trevor and Craig being identical twins is that purest form of movie magic: the thing spoken into existence just by confidently stating it to be so. Despite having similar entitled, fatally confident personalities, there's plenty separating them, from the way they deliver odd punchline emphasis to their hairstyles (one has flowing shoulder-length locks while the other has Lloyd Christmas' bowl cut).
Through a stroke of sheer coincidence, Thomas and Craig now occupy the same job as salesmen at a floor vacuum manufacturer. (The company's jingle is early in a steady stream of out-of-nowhere gags that keep the laughs coming at a decent clip.) Their new boss Gloria (Megan Thee Stallion) soon finds ways to use the two's competitive natures to increase widget sales, tracked on a '90s-style video scoreboard in the office's main warehouse.
Trevor and Craig also have different parents. The boys (c'mon, that's what they really are when we meet them: adult boys) have a dissociating, agoraphobic mother Evelyn (Megan Mullally) and a heretofore-closeted father Harris (Nathan Lane), each with their own . . . complications about where they direct their attention and affection. Soon, the two sons do their own form of private investigating — just one of many alternate definitions of the movie's title explored here — to find that a family reunion might just be the thing to soothe everyone in this idiosyncratic quartet.
The songs that each of these five named characters use to shade in their emotions are less designed to be hummed on your way out of the theater/living room and more designed to tap into the level of unrestrained id that's on display for so much of "Dicks." However irreverent things can get (yes, that's Bowen Yang playing God, both as omniscient narrator and presence in front of a green-screened heaven of sorts), this is more a send-up of office ambition culture and general prudishness than a parody of anything from the stage.
None of these numbers are self-sustained barnburners (though Jeff and Rick Kuperman's choreography does always give you something energetic to look at), yet they still point to this cast's ability to continually sell the madness underneath. Megan Thee Stallion takes an otherwise pat workplace anthem about female empowerment and gives it the energy it needs, including a late verse that lets her capitalize on her own flow. Not only does Lane's role make for an odd complement to his stellar work in "Beau Is Afraid" earlier this year, it ends up being a perfect showcase for his skills as a musical theater technician, complete with all the deadpan timing and falsetto breath control needed to make Harris both a riotous and tender character.
"Dicks: The Musical" truly comes alive when its rapid-fire joke factory is churning out punchlines that feel specific to this particular movie. This is a story of escalation, surprising considering how highly things are pitched by the end of the opening song. That doesn't leave Trevor and Craig much room to be anything other than instigators, which ends up relegating them to the sidelines for a decent chunk of the film's back half once everything else is set in motion. Whenever Evelyn and Harris take center stage instead, the film gets a perverse joy out of pushing Mullally and Lane (no strangers to outrageousness) closer and closer to their potential breaking points, leaving damaged psyches and property in the on-screen couple's wake.
Though the movie isn't filled to the brim with elaborate visual inventiveness, there are still plenty of chances for "Borat" director Larry Charles to play around with this story's presentation. The opening number has plenty of seized opportunities to go for jokes that wouldn't work on stage. There's a combo of practical models, playfully retro stock footage, and lo-fi visual effects touches throughout that add to the jarring, dreamlike nature of it all.
"Dicks: The Musical," with its origins on the Upright Citizens Brigade stage, has retained that theater's energy in one key way. Like a musical improv show, "Dicks" operates on its own set of logic. That's not just in selling vague lookalikes as identical twins, but in characters who flit in and out precisely/only when needed. At its foundation, this is a storybook tale with a pair at the center being agents of chaos slowly infecting everything they come across. Workplaces, theater marquees, pillows, municipal services: everything starts to absorb their prankish tendencies until the ending sequence combines it all into a kind of over-the-top, technicolor uneasiness.
So the culmination of all this high-strung, high-wire on-screen havoc does make good on its intro. Jackson and Sharp are very effective at pushing buttons, often loudly. (Trevor shouting at full volume at one particular unhinged revelation is a strong contender for the Biggest Laugh of 2023.) This is all while being able to cede the floor to fellow mischief makers, even if they do save the biggest provocations for themselves as "Dicks" hurtles to a close. The film's closing swings do have a hint of the stretched, repetitive nature that threatens to drag the film down at points, yet it's all done with the same level of commitment and conviction that brings about enough jokes to fuel the engine. When presented with a neat and tidy possibility of wrapping things up, "Dicks: The Musical" opts to keep one-upping itself, all the way through its end credits sequence.
The outgoing "Dicks" message isn't exactly nihilism, but somehow a more colorful, exuberant cousin of nihilism. It's all nakedly frivolous, and proudly so. If the opening of "Dicks" is a pure joke delivery device and the middle bits present people grappling with what it means to actually care about someone other than yourself, then the real power of the ending is confronting you with whether it's necessary to make a distinction between those two modes in the first place. When "Dicks" does manage to do both at the same time, it's more than enough to make you look forward to what everyone involved sets their joyous, squirm-inducing sights on next.
"Dicks: The Musical" releases in select theaters Oct. 6 and nationwide on Oct. 20.
