Movie Review — The title “Dicks: The Musical” says, does and sings it all

Titillatingly transgressive and deliriously blasphemous, “Dicks: The Musical” barrels through the “Oh no they didn’ts” fast and furiously, a movie so self-conciously gay, outrageous, rude and gay again that one wonders if only George Takei should be allowed to review it.

But we all know “Oh MY” would never do.

Raunchy, vulgar, campy and lower-than-lowbrow, it’s a cult film based on a cult musical and decidedly not for every taste. It’s the sort of spoof that religious cranks could embrace because it plays with their darkest “projected” phobias. No, not the pizza parlor thing.

“Look, Ethel! ‘They’ ARE into bestiality, incest and a Gay and Gay Friendly ‘God!'”

But get past the shock value of it all, the jolt of having “SNL” standout Bowen Yang lead one and all in a closing chorus of “God is a (gay slur that starts with “f” and sounds like “maggot”), and just one question hangs over the afterglow, or if you prefer aftertaste.

Is it funny?

Yeah, it pretty much is. Spit-takes, giggles, guffaws and airless, jaw-dropping “Oh no they DIDN’Ts” are scattered throughout this film starring the guys who conceived it — Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp. It’s brought to the screen by the cinema’s reigning shock jock, Larry Charles, who graduated from “Seinfeld” to “Religilous” and assorted “Borat” outrages, a director who knows where the laughs are and never ever hesitates to step over the line.

“Dicks” is about two big city sales “bros” — womanizers, woman-users, gauche yard dogs in every meaning of the word. But Craig (Sharp) and Trevor (Jackson) are but filling a void at the center of their empty lives. One grew up without a father, the other without a mother.

Yes, they’re twins, separated at birth. And it takes several minutes, a couple of double entendre production numbers about how “I’ll Always Be on Top” and a vamp by Megan Thee Stallion, their new “lady boss,” because such creatures now exist to them, before they figure out all this singing about how “No one understands what I’ve been through” is in vain.

Craig and Trevor know exactly what each other have been through because they’re “identical” (ahem) twins.

Once they figure that out, there’s nothing for it but to find a way to reconnect their parents “Parent Trap” style. The problem is, Evelyn (Megan Mullally SINGS!) is a wheelchair-bound ditz who probably doesn’t need a wheelchair. And Dad (Nathan Lane at his Nathan Laniest) realized he was gay, “queer as a three dollar bill,” a long time ago.

The movie, with a few sidebars into the realm of “sewer boys,” is as simple as that — comically misguided parental match-making, which with sexuality now being embraced as a “fluid” thing, isn’t all that far-fetched, a lot of sight gags (fake movie/play posters with a gay bent — “Lube!” is the word now that “Grease!” isn’t) — and a flurry of funny outtakes under the credits.

But Sharp and Jackson, wholly immersed in characters they’ve been taking over-the-top for years, are a hoot. Lane is a hoot-and-a-half, especially in the outtakes. Yang reminds us he will say, do or sing anything to get a laugh. Ms. Stallion leans into her raunchy brand with brio.

And Mullally, a gay icon among gay icons, all but steals the show — singing with a lisp, mastering the electric wheelchair as sight gag, indulging in all the openly-expressed vulgarisms network TV didn’t allow her to vamp on “Will & Grace.”

If you’re easily offended, or even have a modest vulgarity/raunch threshold, “Dicks” isn’t/aren’t for you. But in a midnight showing amongst the also-not-easily-shocked lovers of cult comedy dirty laughs, “Dicks” would be hard to beat. Ahem.

Rating: R, for all the reasons you’d expect, and then some, honey

Cast: Josh Sharp, Aaron Jackson, Megan Mullally, Nathan Lane, Megan Thee Stallion and Bowen Yang

Credits: Directed by Larry Charles, scripted by Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp. An A-24 release.

Running time: 1:26

About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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