Movie Review: 'Dicks The Musical'

Dicks The Musical (2023)

Directed by Larry Charles

Written by Aaron Jackson, Josh Sharp

Starring Aaron Jackson, Josh Sharp, Nathan Lane, Megan Mullally, Megan Thee Stallion

Release Date October 27th, 2023

Published October 31st, 2023

Dicks The Musical is not quite as filthy as that title might imply. Don't get me wrong, the movie is uproariously filthy, but it's not filled with much full frontal male nudity. That remains one of the very few taboos that Dicks the Musical doesn't confront, at least not head on. That said, with all of the things that Dicks the Musical gets away with under the banner of an R-Rating, the sillier that director Larry Charles and writer-actors Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp, make the MPAA look. Yeah, you can show two men in an aggressive, upside down nude embrace as long as you only show their butts. It's that kind of charged silliness that drives Dicks the Musical in humiliating the Hollywood ratings board.

Dicks the Musical centers its story on a pair of gay men, Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp, who are playing a pair of non-gay characters, alpha male types who have a different woman every night and a six figure salary plus commissions as the top salesmen of their company. Named Craig and Trevor respectively, these two manly beasts are about to come face to face for the first time as their company, Vroomba, is combining their sales staff from two sides of the same big city. This will prove to be important as Craig and Trevor are twins, separated at birth. No, they look nothing alike, but for the purposes of this story we are asked to go along with the gag.

Discovering their brotherly bond, not because they look alike, but rather because they carry two different sides of a necklace, Craig and Trevor excitedly start dreaming of reuniting their parents. To do this, they will engage in their own version of The Parent Trap with each going undercover in the home of the parent who abandoned them. For Craig, this means meeting his mother, Evelyn (Megan Mullally) for the first time. As for Trevor, he is going to meet his father, Harris (Nathan Lane) for the first time. Using the skills that made them top salesman, they believe that they can convince their parents to get back together, Parent Trap style.

I'm leaving out a lot because I don't want to just sit here describing the jokes of Dicks the Musical which I could do endlessly. Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp are a pair of brilliant comic minds who pack Dicks the Musical with sly jokes, broad gags, and wildly absurd ideas that are funny for just how outlandish they are. The humor of Dicks the Musical is raucous and joyous and while many who think our culture has gone soft on being offensive, Dicks the Musical is proof positive that edgy, humor of very questionable taste can still be done, and done well.

They key to politically incorrect humor of the kind that people claim we can't do anymore out of fear of offending anyone, is understanding who or what the subject of the joke is. In the case of Dicks the Musical, more often than not, the humor is turned back on Craig and Trevor, avoiding anything insulting toward minority groups or marginalized people while still making a very edgy comic musical. Dicks the Musical doesn't take cheap shorts, it doesn't punch down, and it still manages to be funny and gleefully offensive in terms of its sexual humor and language.

I wasn't offended by Dicks the Musical, I was too busy laughing. The film has several deeply uncomfortable moments but the envelope pushing never goes into nasty territory. Rather, the broadest, and most offensive jokes in Dicks the Musical come at the expense of the main characters and their pathetic attempts to maintain their masculine identity by any means necessary. The ending of Dicks the Musical, which, again, I will not spoil, takes the offensive elements of the movie and makes them even more absurd and likely to tick off the squares who can't handle such broad, over the top, humor.

All of that said, I recommend Dicks the Musical. This movie is hilarious from beginning to end. The songs are witty and funny from start to finish. The makers of Dicks the Musical have a brilliant, broad, sense of humor. They have a real knack for creating absurdity and chaos in any given scene and growing that scene to bigger and bigger laughs. The film is outrageous and it is not for those with a sensitive constitution. However, if you like filthy jokes and are not easily offended, Dicks the Musical is a rollicking good time, a gleefully hilarious and offensive bit of musical comedy.

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