“A24’s first musical” fails to justify its transition from UCB sketch to full-length film.

The audaciously titled Dicks: The Musical comes with an equally eye-catching tagline, boasting the honor of being “A24’s first musical.” That’s bound to intrigue cinephiles everywhere. After all, not every movie studio is trendy enough to regularly sell out of logo festooned merchandise. Or even make hipster merch in the first place. 

Dicks proves a quirky, energetic little musical that doesn’t feel out of place alongside other offbeat A24 offerings such as Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. However, beyond capitalizing on the novelty of A24’s inaugural musical, it’s difficult to see exactly why it made the journey from the stage show Fucking Identical Twins to the big screen.

Comedians Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson, the co-creators and stars of Twins, reprise their roles as the titular dicks, a pair of competitive, cutthroat businessmen named Craig and Trevor. While competing for sales, the two discover they are actually identical twins, separated at birth. Having grown disenchanted with their respective parents, they hatch a Parent Trap-style plan to get them back together.

Do Sharp and Jackson look anything like brothers, let alone identical twins? Of course not. Luckily, SNL’s Bowen Yang is on hand. He serves as the narrator and the ultimate Deus Ex Machina, God Himself, to wave away any questions about this increasingly surreal and bizarre world. He’s the ideal vessel for the film’s goofy, frenetic voice. We first get a taste of that voice in Dicks: The Musical’s opening title card. It solemnly announces the two gay men who wrote the story will be “bravely” playing straight. Other running jokes, like an impeccable background gag featuring spoofs of famous Broadway posters, wink at the production’s queer roots. 

The best running bit involves the boys’ father, Harris Tiddle, played by the legendary Nathan Lane. In his character’s “I Am” number, “Gay Old Life,” he blithely mentions his “Sewer Boys,” as a staple of queer city life, alongside more expected cliches like brunch and going to the symphony. The Sewer Boys turn out to be a pair of disgusting, diaper-wearing reptilian monsters Tiddle keeps caged in his apartment. The puppets portraying said Boys do not look realistic or even lifelike, clearly by design. They are arrestingly ugly—hard to look and hard to look away. 

Most importantly, the Boys add another layer of fantastical absurdity necessary to keep the thin plot from getting too dull. Put simply, there’s not a lot of there there. Craig and Trevor’s daffy, eccentric mother, Evelyn Brock, is played by another Broadway triple threat, Megan Mullally. Mullally does her best to elevate another “I Am” song with a goofy character voice. Unfortunately, by the time Dicks: The Musical introduces the parents, it becomes clear that these are more or less the only type of songs the writers have included. 

As longtime musical fans already know, shows that don’t feature many songs with characters interacting, instead of just singing out their desires or personalities, can start to feel like tiresome cabarets. To make matters worse, besides the genuinely artful Sewer Boys puppets and small production design details like the Broadway posters, there’s not much in this film to add visual interest. Director Larry Charles (Borat) seems ill-equipped to film a musical. There’s a heavy over-reliance on repeated mirrored shots and other rote visual tricks during the song and dance scenes. The costumes and sets are utilitarian and cheap-looking. 

It’s disappointing A24 didn’t give the Dicks a bigger budget to bring their vision to life before slapping their name all over the movie’s marketing. Maybe the production could rightfully sense that Dicks will be an acquired taste, especially when the original title takes on a literal meaning. 

Director Larry Charles (Borat) seems ill-equipped to film a musical.

Rap sensation Megan Thee Stallion shines in her brief role as the twins’ badass boss, Gloria. Her uproarious number, “Out Alpha the Alpha,” the only song that might have a life outside this musical, energizes a dragging third act. It also serves to counterbalance the movie’s worst running joke, Evelyn’s disembodied genitalia running amok. Revivifying the stereotype of vaginas as disgusting to gay men proves tired and far less funny than anything Twiddle rattled off during “Gay Old Life.” The flying CGI vulva is both less exciting than it sounds here and worse-looking than the feature’s practical effects. Surely that CGI money could have gone towards a few more sets or characters because the world of Dicks feels empty.

Even at a trim 86 minutes, Dicks is slightly overlong. It’s easy to imagine absolutely loving this production as a brisk hourlong one-act stage show, especially if the audience was experiencing Sharp and Jackson’s high energy and effective comedic chemistry live. A blooper reel during the credits makes it clear that all the actors involved had a great time making it. Nathan Lane cries with laughter as he spits a mouthful of chewed ham onto the reptilian puppets, for example. 

Without any genuinely catchy songs besides “Out Alpha the Alpha,” there’s little to make Dicks memorable. Instead, perhaps, it will make a great, obscure movie trivia question someday: What was A24’s first musical?

Dicks The Musical is currently playing to the back row in theatres.

Dicks The Musical Trailer: