You don’t have to be insane to inhabit the daft bizarro dimension in which the writer-stars Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson situate the Dada-on-Horny-Goat-Weed delirium of Dicks: The Musical, but it helps. That said, you do have to have an enduring love for – or at the very least, an appreciation for the distinct tonalities of – musical theater, the petri dish that incubated this special little mutant abomination. What began as an Off-Broadway sensation titled Fucking Identical Twins enters cinemas clawing and snarling, odds-on the American entertainment industry’s most insistently and consistently strange, grotesque creation this year. And if not that, it’s a safe bet that it’s still the only one with a disembodied, talking, flying pudenda.
The particular brand of “stupid and we know it” ebullience native to the stage is an acquired taste all but guaranteeing a love-it-or-loathe it response to a true passion project that’s always known its audience and refused to worry about anyone else. Sick puppies amenable to its piquant mix of vibrato-voiced camp and gross-out shenanigans will probably quote it on their deathbeds, but the vast majority of respectable citizens will get in a few blinks of disbelief before fleeing the theater. It’s plain to see that that’s just how Sharp and Jackson like it, the moral to be yourself – incestuous urges and all – lying buried underneath a thick layer of partially masticated deli ham. Few films so violently, deludedly believe in themselves, and even if the high pitch of its humor makes one want to plug their ears, this jazz-handed freakshow demands some measure of respect for the simple fact of its dumbfounding, throbbing existence. With a rictus smile shellacked on its face, the film grapevines along the razor-thin line between annoying idiocy and demented inspiration.
Separated-at-birth Craig (Sharp) and Trevor (Jackson, the muggier of the two) are arrogant cocks-of-the-walk, emphasis on – well, it’s right there in the title. The actors make a burlesque of heterosexuality much in the same way Richard Pryor would do his white-person voice, less an impression than an absurd impressionistic invention all its own. As extremely straight men, they stride through the world as gods, whether blessing panting women with their sexual attention or dueling for top salesman at their Roomba parts retail company. (They do not sell Roombas, so don’t even ask.) After they join their telltale lockets and realize they share a genetic code, they hatch a plan to repair the fractured family by Parent Trapping their luxuriously gay father Harris (Nathan Lane) back with their mother Evelyn (Megan Mullally), a ball of kooky eccentricities taken lisping, human form.
A sharp-eyed viewer might notice that Sharp and Jackson do not resemble one another in the slightest, a critique preempted by God (Bowen Yang, dressed as if the creator of the universe just got back from a weekend on Fire Island) declaring that yes, they actually do. The compulsion to point and smirk at its own faux-badness is the most irksome tic in a film that skirts irritation with every line-read and pulls off an admirable ratio of dodges. Every second Mullally and Lane spend onscreen should be preserved in the library of Congress so that future generations of thespians might learn from their example. Megan Thee Stallion, who appears to have logged a couple days on set as an exceptionally bossed-up boss, less so. Before long, a captive audience even takes a shine to Craig and Trevor through their fortissimo obnoxiousness. They have a way of growing on you, much like the Sewer Boys, a pair of deformed foot-tall aberrations that look like if Godzilla’s feckless son Minilla was made out of scrotum skin.
For all its dicey courting of the counterintuitive appeal that comes from making cheap, dumb art on purpose, the production avoids falling apart due to a bedrock of superb toe-tappers flipping through the standards of the form: a power ballad, a Motown homage, the obligatory “I Want” song. They affirm that Sharp and Jackson come from an earnest place in their non-stop, gag-dense schtick, especially the rousing grand finale that refers to the Lord Almighty with a term unprintable in the pages of the Guardian. Though some may find the path to enjoyment long and hard, a sincerity in the go-for-broke commitment to the bit can penetrate even the most cynical defenses.
Dicks: The Musical is screening at the Toronto film festival and will be released later this year
