Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
Music: B-

Dicks: The Musical is definitely the filthiest rip-off of The Parent Trap you’ll ever see. Strangely, even as it goes further with certain taboos than any other movie ever has—this is very much the point—I’m sort of disappointed it wasn’t any filthier. Get this: there aren’t any actual dicks in this movie. No genuine full-frontal nudity whatsoever! This feels like false advertising. If it weren’t for the endless amount of times someone says “fuck,” this movie might have gotten a PG-13 rating. Okay, probably not.

One of the many meta gags about this movie is that the “Dicks” of the title actually refers to the personalities of the two leads, Craig and Trevor (Josh Sharp an Aaron Jackson, on whose original 2015 UCB show this is based; they are also co-writers of the script). We’re told in opening title cards how “brave” it is that these two gay actors are playing straight characters—who are, you guessed it, both dicks. They display such a camp level of narcissism and misogyny that it circles all the way back around to delightful.

There was a moment early on in Dicks: The Musical when I was finding it so genuinely hilarious, I actually thought to myself: Is this the 21st century’s answer to AIRPLANE? Alas. If only.

As Craig and Trevor discover they are “identical twins” (even though the two actors don’t look anything alike aside from being a cuple of brown haired White guys) and hatch a plan to trick their estranged and bonkers parents (Megan Mullaly and Nathan Lane, milking this movie for all the moderate value that it’s worth), the potential is there. There’s a scene with Nathan Lane and his two janky puppet “Sewer Boys” that had me laughing so hard I was in tears. You’ll never look at a bag of ham the same way again.

And then there’s Megan Thee Stallion, cast as the CEO of the company both Craig and Trevor also discover they work for, and are tied for the top sellers of parts for autonomous vacuum cleaners. Getting such a wildly random name into this movie is fun, right? She even gets a pretty elaborate song and dance number. The problem is that her song is merely slightly amusing, and doesn’t elicit any genuine laughs, and in that failure kind of stops the momentum of bonkers hilarity dead in its tracks. And although there are certainly genuinely funny moments after that, Dicks: The Musical never fully recovers.

Megan Thee Stallion’s song isn’t even the only issue, musically—it’s just the best example, of how a movie like this works far better if the music is as exceptional as its humor. The Book of Mormon, for example, has much greater success at this. (To be fair, The Book of Mormon has never been adapted to film, and there’s no guarantee that it would adapt well.)

Dicks the Musical also features a pointedly flamboyant Bowen Yang as God, with mixed but fun results. I won’t spoil the specific depravity “God” winds up fully endorsing, which I have mixed feelings about, even as irreverent comedy. I don’t even necessarily take issue with it as a comic idea, but rather the manner in which it’s presented here. It’s simply not as funny as Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson want us to think it is.

Megan Mullaly’s vagina falling off and running away, though? We don’t even see that happen, we get to watch Aaron Jackson as Trevor describing it to his brother—and it’s fucking hilarious. And that’s the thing: I laughed a lot at Dicks: The Musical. Unfortunately, like way too many other comedies, it’s front-loaded with the funniest gags, which means it starts to lose steam about halfway through. And this movie is all of 86 minutes long.

The performers across the board are clearly having a great time, and that alone keeps the filthy depravity a fun time, punctuated with some great outtakes during the end credits. It just moves from a movie that feels wildly underrated at first, to one where you consider its mixed reviews and think: that tracks.

*You won’t see any actual dicks but you’ll see some guys singing about them.*

Overall: B