Dicks: The Musical is a 2023 musical comedy film directed by Larry Charles (Borat) and written by Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp based upon their off-Broadway musical Fucking Identical Twins. It stars Jackson, Sharp, Nathan Lane, Megan Mullally, Bowen Yang, and Megan Thee Stallion.
The film follows two rival businessmen who discover they’re identical twins and set out to get their parents back together… a task made more difficult due to the fact that their dad is gay. Billed as A24’s first musical, Dicks: The Musical premiered at TIFF on September 3, 2023, before releasing wide on September 9.
Previews: Trailer
Dicks: The Musical contains examples of the following:
- Absurdly Elderly Mother: Evelyn claims multiple times to be 94, which, if true, would make her no younger than 57 when she gave birth to the twins. Craig-as-Trevor even says "that can't be right" when she says it the first time. Mitigating this is she also claims not to remember when she was born.
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The family goes into the sewer to find the escaped Sewer Boys and it has lots of room to move around in. Harris even managed to get a boat into it in the backstory.
- Alleged Lookalikes: Stallion’s character states that Craig and Trevor could be twins, despite it being clear to both the brothers and the audience that they look only vaguely similar. Notably, Craig has brown eyes while Trevor's are blue. God tells the audience they are identical twins and anticipates them not believing him. However, they do act incredibly similar, both being the top salesman at the same company and even being shown next to doors labeled 69a and 69b respectively.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear which of the many absurd claims Evelyn makes about herself to Craig-as-Trevor are true. At least one that would be impossible in real life is confirmed to be.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Vaginas falling off and becoming sentient and sewer gremlins kept as pets may be strange, but they're definitely not unheard of. When bisexuality is brought up on the other hand, the response is "now I've heard everything."
- Black Boss Lady: Gloria, the twins' boss, as portrayed by Megan Thee Stallion, is very efficient and no-nonsense.
- Blatant Lies: The opening narration claims this is the first time a gay person has ever written anything.
- Camp Straight: Both Craig and Trevor are extremely campy and effeminate men played by openly gay actors who the audience are nonetheless told numerous times are heterosexual ladies men. Crosses over into Transparent Closet by the end, when the two profess their love for each other, have graphic sex, and get married.
- Character as Himself: The Sewer Boys - bizarre, gremlin-like creatures portrayed by puppets - are given the And Starring credit in the trailer.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Both of the parents act very bizarre. Trevor's Mother is shown to ramble about various odd things about her and Craig's Dad, while appearing to just be a rich, out of touch man at first, is deeply obsessed with what he calls 'Sewer Boys' a pair of feral, vicious things that he keeps locked up in a cage and who feed on blood.
- Comically Missing the Point: When Trevor-as-Craig is freaking out about the Sewer Boys, Harris assures him it's fine to take a while to adjust to him coming out as gay.
- Companion Cube: Evelyn has become friends with various inanimate objects in her home, giving them names like Jerome and Patricia.
- Company Cross References: At one point in the trailer a theater marquee reads X24 Presents: Everyone, Everywhere Cums at Once, an obvious reference to one of A24's most well-known films.
- Condescending Compassion: Parodied in the introductory texts, which repeatedly state how brave it is for gay men to do things like write stories and play heterosexual characters.
- The Dividual: Craig and Trevor have the same personality, lead identical lives, and are only really two separate people so that the film's deliberately trite Twin Switch plot can happen. Craig is shown to be slightly more pessimistic than Trevor for the sake of their Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure, but outside of this their most distinguishing features are (ironically) their physical appearances. A Running Gag even has the two accidentally calling themselves by the other's name, showing that even they can't meaningfully distinguish each other.
- Friends with Benefits: Harris and Evelyn decide to remain friends and occasionally have sex after reuniting.
- Gag Penis: Trevor claims to have a penis a total of 17-inches long, but it turns out that while it is large, it's only slightly larger than average.
- Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Both Craig and Trevor are definitely straight, according to the opening narration, God, and themselves. They even say "no homo" after saying they want to be brothers despite that seeming not to need to be clarified. Ironically, they do end up getting into a sexual and romantic relationship with each other.
- Hilarious Outtakes: A series of outtakes cover the credits.
- Human Pet: The song "Out-Alpha the Alpha" ends with a shot of Gloria walking several of her leashed male employees like dogs.
- Hypocrite: Gloria repeatedly complains about the patriarchy and wishes for a world full of equity, while simultaneously proving herself to be a horrible misandrist who treats men like trash, although considering what most of these men are like, her actions aren't entirely wrong.
- Informed Ability: Craig and Trevor are ostensibly excellent salesmen who regularly push tens of thousands of dollars in product over single phone calls, but the audience never gets to see them in action. And while they claim their sales skills will assist them in reuniting their parents, their attempts to do so are comically slapdash at best.
- Informed Attribute: Craig and Trevor are stated at various points to be macho alpha male types but come across much more strongly as catty and effeminate gay men.
- Jerkass: If the movie's title didn't clue you in, Craig and Trevor are both selfish assholes who freely and carelessly ruin the lives of others for the sake of their own gain. The song "You Can't Give Up" is all about how the two harm others to get their way disguised as an uplifting inspirational number. Their boss Gloria is no better, and freely states that she only values her employees for the amount of money the can make her while physically abusing the males.
- Lemony Narrator: God occasionally provides narration and quippy commentary into the story. At one point, he cuts in just to praise a musical number.
- Mundane Fantastic: The story is about hotshot salesman twins separated at birth wanting their parents to get back together, that also happens to feature gremlin-like "Sewer Boys", God casually interacting with the characters, and a character's vagina detaching from her body and becoming sentient.
- No Bisexuals: In-Universe, when Harris realizes he is attracted to both men and women, he continues to call himself "both gay and straight" and Evelyn finds that to be even stranger than anything else that has happened.
- Only Sane by Comparison: Craig and Trevor are idiotic, childish dickheads, yet come across as downright sensible when opposite their deranged parents.
- Overly Long Gag: In one scene, Evelyn tries to get Craig-as-Trevor to grab one of her knick-knacks while adamantly refusing to describe it, simply pointing in its direction, resulting in him grabbing close to a dozen wrong things with no clarification.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: The twins disguising as each other amounts to them both wearing shitty-looking wigs that loosely resembles the other's hairstyle. While their status as Alleged Lookalikes allows them to pull it off, both of their parents clock the clearly fake hair almost immediately.
- Rapid-Fire "No!": Trevor-as-Craig shouts "No!" multiple times in a row upon seeing the sewer boys.
- Shaped Like Itself: Evelyn claims she makes her own sand out of sand.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Both Harris and Evelyn say they don't remember their son's hair being so "cheap and shitty-looking" when they attempt to pass as each other.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial:
- Evelyn and Harris both claim they only have one son, while Evelyn says she could have had another son just like him but didn't, because she "had a vasectomy one second after [he was] born."
- With the benefit of hindsight, the twins saying no homo after saying they want to be brothers, and then falling in love with each other anyway.
- Twin Switch: Craig and Trevor switch places to trick their parents into remarrying. Played for Laughs in that there's no real reason for them to disguise as each other for their plot to work and both of their parents comment on their terrible wigs.
- Twincest: Played for laughs. At the end rather than their parents getting ready, Craig and Trevor, "twin" brothers, get married. Everyone rejoices.
- Whole-Plot Reference: To The Parent Trap (1961) (and its remake). Twins separated at birth to live with one parent each meet and try to trick the parents into remarrying... only this time, the twins are adult men and there are more difficult obstacles in getting the characters married. They ultimately fail but get married themselves.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Trevor-as-Craig shouts "Those are their names?" upon learning that Harris named the Sewer Boys "Backpack" and "Whisper."
