There is nothing I love more than audacity and originality that lands and in our current comedic landscape so much time is spent and for my money wasted on discussing the concept of not being able to make boundary pushing comedies anymore, that one fails to notice the audacious comedies coming out! Perhaps there is no greater example of such a thing than with 2023’s brilliant, masterful and hilalrious as all hell Dicks: The Musical – a bold original and exciting new musical work than stands alone not only in the world of comedy, but also in the current world of movie musicals.
Dicks is a musical loud and proud and in a world where we are still for some reason marketing movie musicals as if they are far from off it, the sheer lack of apology that is the in the fabric of this new film takes it to new levels of appreciation for me. This is a film that turns The Parent Trap into a perverted, queer epic tale of new heights of weirdness and has more filmic flare in presenting musical numbers than any recent movie musical you can mention. This film comes from a fringe comedy piece written by and starring this films’ two leads Josh Sharp and Andrew Jackson, and follows a Parent Trap like formula as they try to get their two parents back together after being separated at birth. However this is a film with a gay god as a narrator (played wonderful as always by Bowen Yang), where the father played by Nathan Lane is now a gay man who resides in his home with two creatures known as the sewer boys and where the mother in question, is a beyond cooky and practically insane Megan Mullally who spends her days having sex with her bric-a-brac. To be frank; you’re either in or your out and I was beyond in from a very, very early stage. The songs (written by Sharp, Jackson and Karl Saint Lucy) are genuinely all excellent and range from genuinely hilalrious to genuinely touching and sentimental, with one particular ballad duet shared between Lane and Mullaly being one of my scenes of the year for certain. Larry Charles directs the whole film with an incredible talent for musical numbers and comedy in a far stricter fashion than the Borat’s and Bruno’s that of course he is best known for. Lane and Mullally are both astounding as one would come to expect, but their ability to just go full hog and pull the weight of some of the hardest comedic material with some of the biggest possibilities to go wrong still astounds me. But it is Sharp and Jackson who of course are the ones to shout about here with their impeccable writing craft and performance abilities, it’s the strongest debuts of the year in acting and writing for my money.
This is a movie
that in so many ways defies description and yet the first thing I want to discuss
it in relation to are two other films that I feel after sometime this will be
discussed in the same vein as; Pink Flamingos and more so The Rocky
Horror Picture Show. Both were wildly original queer independent films that
baffled critics in oh so many ways and then went on to gain a tremendous cult
status – now when films feel of that ilk in this modern era, the first thought
people have is that rather cynically some attempt is being made to make an
intentional cult classic, when obviously the notion of such a thing defies the
principal of cult status. I feel like some are discussing Dicks in that
sense, when for me it has more in common with the works of John Waters and
Richard O’Brein than people are reckoning with. In regards to Waters and Flamingos,
there is such a boundary pushing sensibility that never once sacrifices
humour or entertainment value for this sensationalism or the films clear
adoration for bygone film eras and genres. However in regards to Rocky
Horror I wish to discuss how the film after all of its insanity and
bizzarity eventually comes in a round about message to All Love is Love. Now
of course without spoiling the film I won’t discuss how that comes to pass, but
it is very similar for me to how Rocky Horror after all of its mania
comes down to Don’t Dream It, Be It, with neither film sacrificing any
of their queerness or their shockingness for what could be seen as quite
saccharin messages. This is as hilalrious and frankly odd as any film I’ve seen
of recent, but when it comes to sincerity of message, sincerity of entertainment
value and frankly the chance to watch two tremendous new stars make debuts –
it’s a firm favourite of mine this year! Then on top of it all you get Megan
Thee Stallion too on absolute top form giving yet another incredible song,
throwing in yet another style of music and comedy into the film. A second watch
of this film really did place it firmly, firmly in my favourites of the year.
10/10. Bold, original and hilalrious and boundary pushing in ways that avoid a plague of accusations of edginess or anything of the like. This is like no film you’ve seen in a very long time. Sharp and Jackson are dynamic and astoundingly talented and this makes for two incredible debuts. Of course Lane and Mullally are astounding, they’re Nathan Lane and Megan Mullally and this film knows that and plays into their strengths whilst also pushing them into further levels of clownery. Charles brings a cinematic quality to the whole proceedings that makes this genuinely the best shot movie musical I’ve seen all year that succeeds in ways that the bigger budgeted and more traditional movie musicals don’t touch in any way shape or form.
P.S. For as much as was made about the Barbie nominations sweep in Best original song, can we not find space for any of these genuinely excellent songs from this film? They managed to get South Park nominated and of course rightfully so. Surely Oscar voters could have seen the immense talent on display here and noted to themselves that the ceremony would have been made a million times better by a live performance of absolutely any of these songs.
- Thomas Carruthers
0 Comments