You apparently can’t name a movie F—ing Identical Twins so instead we have Dicks: The Musical (now streaming on Max), which makes sense, I guess, sort of, almost. The movie adapts Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson’s off-Broadway crassfest F—ing Identical Twins, about long-lost twin brothers who conspire to reunite their parents so everyone can be the big happy family they never had. Admittedly, I didn’t know quite what I was getting into with this one, which starts off being A Bit Much and then gets progressively more nasty and insane during the next 80-odd minutes. I think the movie wants us to be offended, or at least to laugh at the people who’d be offended by its flagrant ribaldry, which includes, but is not limited to: Incest, blasphemy, Nathan Lane regurgitating lunch meat into the mouths of diapered sewer creatures and – GASP – single-parent homes. Consider yourself warned!
The Gist: Imagine the world we live in, except stupider. I know, it’s not easy – we’re pretty much beyond the pale at this point, but please try. Anyway, in this world, Craig (Sharp) and Trevor (Jackson) are identical twins that don’t look like each other at all, and if you can’t get past that, I recommend turning this movie off and firing up a Great American Family original, because the rest of Dicks consists of hurdles far too tall for you to overcome, and many of them incorporate heavily choreographed musical numbers in which people sing songs laden with double-entendres, single-entendres, zero-entendres and straight-up words that leave nothing at all for the imagination. It’s all so very naughty.
Craig and Trevor were separated at birth. Neither knows the other exists – until their mutual employer merges offices, and suddenly they see each other and think they’re looking in a mirror even though they don’t look alike. That’s the joke. Get it? But they’re very much the same type of human being, namely, obnoxious alpha-male cretins who brag about their genital size and aim to nuke their competitors in the robot-vacuum-parts sales game. Craig and Trevor soon realize the truth: Their parents split up and each took one baby, and it’s totally obvious that the boys became repulsive adult males because, in their own words, “single-parent homes aren’t real families!”
They concoct a pointlessly convoluted scheme – because pointlessly convoluted schemes are HILARIOUS, you know – to infiltrate their parents’ psychotic bubbles in an attempt to get them to remarry. Easier said than done. Their ma Evelyn (Megan Mullally) has twigs in her hair, speaks in a Goofy Voice and, most notably, no longer has any genitalia, because it fell off years ago and now she keeps it in a plastic bag in her purse. Will they just talk about Evelyn’s detached hooha, or will it make an appearance? NO SPOILERS. Elsewhere, their pa Harris (Lane) has come out as gay, and on top of that, he spends all his time taking care of his “sewer boys,” miniature mutant humanoids he keeps in a cage and feeds lunch meat that he has to chew for them. What in the living crap are those things? NO SPOILERS, I says! Will Craig and Trevor succeed at reuniting their demented-ass family? I told you NO SPOILERS, so get out of here with the damn questions, fer chrissake!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Dicks: The Musical is Dumb and Dumber meets Three Identical Strangers meets Shortbus meets The Parent Trap meets John Waters under a bridge in a skeevy part of town with a bagful of mysterious powder in his pocket.
Performance Worth Watching: I’m torn between admiring Mullally for her commitment to the bit and wondering if someone needs to fly out to Uranus and bring her home. So this accolade goes to Megan Thee Stallion for playing Craig and Trevor’s boss, and bringing down the house with “Out Alpha the Alpha,” a number in which she takes a bunch of leashed and gagged hetero men for a walk like the damn dogs they are.
Memorable Dialogue: It’s not what she says but how she says it: Mullally: “I’m an independent woman. I do not like when people live with” (insanely long pause that goes on nearly forever) “me.”
Sex and Skin: This is as good a place as any to say that the incest sequence will probably test your sensibilities, assuming you get deep enough into the film to experience it.
Our Take: So, do we give in to this thing, or dig in our heels and resist it? Dicks makes Sharp and Jackson’s intent crystal effing clear: It aims to be offensive. Or, more accurately, to venture so far over the line it becomes absurd. It prompts my usual spiel about taste – good taste is good (e.g., I dunno, Oppenheimer or something), and bad taste is good because it implies satirical intent (e.g. Waters’ Female Trouble), and tastelessness is bad because it lacks self-awareness (e.g., the worst of the Adam Sandler oeuvre).
There’s little debate that Sharp and Jackson have satirical intentions, jabbing as they do at socially conservative viewpoints. If they seem unfocused in their political commentary, keep in mind that their superficial tumbles into the sewage tank are at least underscored by the implication that people who tut-tut at naughty words and scatological humor, and don’t tolerate jabs at religion and “traditional family” tropes, are their targets, and are likely to take offense, assuming they actually watch this movie, which they almost certainly won’t.
But we’re speaking in hypotheticals here. In reality, Dicks teeters precariously on the line between endearingly obnoxious and just plain obnoxious. Sharp and Jackson are grating leads who bleat to the back row like hungry randy goats, but they’re at least wise enough to cast old pros like Mullally and Lane, who generate laughs with significantly less effort. Director Larry Charles (who handled similarly transparently provocative material in Borat) struggles to give the hectic musical numbers much snap, and we’re left with the lingering sense that a movie satirizing Broadway is like couching a diss track about Eminem inside an opera libretto. In theory, pissing off the prudes is always fun; in execution, Dicks succeeds modestly at best, and maybe could have been more effective had it thrown in a few subtle digs instead of always yelling grotesqueries directly in our faces.
Our Call: If even only a few of the right people get honked off by Dicks: The Musical, then it’s a success. So STREAM IT, I guess.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.