Trevor (Aaron Jackson) and Craig (Josh Sharp) are both the titular dicks and the writers (along with composer Karl Saint Lucy) of Dicks: The Musical, a furious, raging critique of modern business culture and the inescapable weirdness of families. They’re brought together in a ridiculous office consolidation to sell ridiculous products, where their new supervisor Megan Thee Stallion (with flawless outfits and choreography) pits them against one another — not just personally, but in their very shaky perceptions of The World. The two are abstractly successful businessdudes determined on living Alpha Lives while soaking in a sea of excess, with money and ladies at arm’s reach and no lingering sense of emptiness. But that latter ache grows all the more present when the two realize that they are identical twins of near-Shakespearean provenance.
[Side note: If, looking at the two stars, you as a viewer can’t get past the fact that they aren’t anything close to identical, that’s probably a good sign that the film isn’t necessarily for you. There are lots of things in this scrappy beast of a movie that might cause turmoil, but if you’re having trouble embracing that aspect of the story, then I worry what might happen when The Sewer Boys show up, or when God gets some exceptional changes of outfit.]
What are two professionally successful but personally adrift late-20-something business guys to do upon discovering this shared family history? If your first thought was Parent Trapping, you were absolutely correct. Which brings in Harris (Nathan Lane) and Evelyn (Megan Mullally), entrenching their iconic stature among theater kids and weirdos for at least another decade or so. The problem with these particular parents is that Harris is very gay and Evelyn is immobile in her apartment (and possibly an ancient incarnation of some unknowable power and at the very least gifted with some Cronenbergian attributes), and neither is particularly nostalgic for their rocky marriage. So what are the dicks to do? Shenanigans! But the best kind: messy musical-theater shenanigans.
When Mullally, toward the end of the song “Lonely,” lets loose with her Supreme Music Program/Sweetheart Break-In rock goddess voice, it is an electrifying moment. It doesn’t break the character of Evelyn from the willowy mystery she’s been presented as, but rather complicates her. That’s a transcendent bolt from above. But it in no way precludes other film-shaking choices later on, including a couple of character evolutions coupled with a transgressive finale that very well may cause riots.
Dicks: The Musical
This film does a good job of getting at the raw, naughty energy of truly underground theater, where boundaries can be broken and cuss words can be used as load-bearing joints in the script. There’s a lot of Tom Eyen here, as well as some John Waters and even some Gregg Araki, and it’s exactly the right next step for everyone who saw Theater Camp and maybe wanted to take the next, edgier step. But understand that this film’s last 10 or so minutes are as potentially explosive as those of Harmony Korine’s The Beach Bum, in that they present something that will make the closed-minded and the dogmatic just completely lose their shit. And possibly spontaneously combust.
I worked in a theater during the opening weekend of Drop Dead Gorgeous back in 1999, and you have never seen a pre-YouTube, pre-Worldstar freakout like right when Denise Richards’ character started her performance of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.” Dicks: The Musical leaves that shockwave in the dust, never looking back, messing with all the minds.
