As a lifelong fan of musical theater, I have an overwhelming urge to see any musical movie that comes out. This has caused me to make a strange and painful promise to myself to watch any original musical that comes out. Even if my instincts tell me I’m not going to enjoy it, I will watch it.
So even though the trailer for Dicks: The Musical signaled that it probably wasn’t going to align with my personal sense of humor, I bought a ticket to an opening day showing anyway.
As soon as the film opened and the first musical number started playing, I was overwhelmed with cringe. The performances were extremely stagey to the point where the actors looked like animated characters. The movie has a simple story that mainly serves as a framework to bounce a bunch of jokes off of. It is definitely primarily a comedy, but for me, almost all the attempts at humor came across as awkward.
The movie centers on two brothers, Craig (Joshua Sharp) and Trevor (Aaron Jackson), who are very sexually active and successful businessmen that have never met one another. They reunite after a company merger and partake in a feud encouraged by their boss (Megan Thee Stallion). Once they realize their relationship, they set out to reunite their divorced parents and silliness ensues. The film is a fairly direct adaptation of the two-man musical F***ing Identical Twins, originally written and performed by Sharp and Jackson.
The cast is solid but aside from a few standouts, most of the performances didn’t gel for me. Nathan Lane who plays the twins’ father is hilarious in his introduction scene where he sings about being gay and taking care of his sewer boys. Megan Thee Stallion was particularly hilarious in the way she very confidently delivered each of her one liners. Her performance was just as animated as everyone else’s but she felt out of place next to every other actor, which only served to make her scenes funnier. Her musical number came out of nowhere, served no purpose, and was delightfully chaotic. The rest of the cast however, despite their best efforts, failed to sell the comedy of their characters and dialogue quite as well.
The two leads shine during the more improvised bits, where they tone down their expressions and voices to simply react to the absurdity of their situations. For most of the film, they are so animated and frantic that it becomes increasingly exhausting to watch them the longer the movie goes on. Not to mention how in most scenes, they’re playing off characters that are also eccentric and exaggerated. It’s difficult to appreciate one character’s quirks when they are interacting with someone just as strange and colorful. I was just begging for some contrast between the energies of all these characters so their unique charms could really shine.
The performances hamper the comedy, but there are also several jokes and physical gags that are funny in concept and botched in execution. Most characters punctuate their sentences with “fuck” or “shit” and it gets old quick. The scenes also go on for way too long with characters making obvious jokes that you see coming from a mile away.
The most disappointing part of this movie is that I think all my problems with it would’ve been alleviated had I seen it as a stage show. The performances would’ve felt less out of place and I’m sure the jokes would’ve landed better as well. This film strikes me as a very literal adaptation of its source material and I think tweaking the jokes and the way the actors were directed would’ve done a lot in making the comedy more effective.
Ultimately, Dicks: The Musical does not live up to its comedic potential despite providing a couple of good laughs along the way.
Alexis Alzamora is a first-year documentary studies and screen cultures double major whose inner theater kid was left behind with A24’s first movie musical. You can reach Alexis at [email protected].