Dicks: The Musical review: The Parent Trap riff hits some of the right notes

All you need to know about Dicks: The Musical is telegraphed by its title. The Larry Charles-directed movie musical is all too proud to shout (sing!) from the rooftops that it’s a cheekily immature proposition, one intent on getting you to snicker at its lowbrow, balls to the wall humor. Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp, adapting and expanding their two-man show into a feature-length film that’ll no doubt serve as their calling card for years to come, have created a fully bonkers riff on The Parent Trap that needs to be seen to be believed.

Jackson and Sharp play Trevor Brock and Craig Tittle, two cocksure heterosexual professionals who love boasting about how much they rule (in bed, at work, in life) in songs that play as loving pastiches of musical tunes you’ll be discouraged from taking too seriously. Trevor and Craig soon become each other’s nemesis as they compete to be the top vacuum salesman and win the graces of their no-nonsense boss, Gloria (Megan Thee Stallion, having fun in her first feature film role). But wait there’s more! Midway through singing about their respectively dour childhoods (with a single dad for one, a single mom for the other) Trevor and Craig realize they are, in their own words “fucking identical twins.” No matter that Jackson and Sharp make no attempt to look alike (or fit the straight-acting roles they’ve created for one another). That’s but one of the many gambles the film takes once the twins band together to reunite their parents, played by comedic geniuses Megan Mullally (with a literal funny lisp) and Nathan Lane (with a figural limp wrist).

Following the wacky shenanigans that characterized both the 1961 Haley Mills comedy Parent Trap and its 1998 Lindsay Lohan remake—where two young girls collude to get their mom and dad back together—Dicks revels in the absurdity of having two cocky and very straight grown men attempting the same. Add in the fact that Lane’s Harris has long realized he’s attracted to men (and has since adopted two rat-looking creatures he adoringly calls his Sewer Boys, whom he feeds by spitting into their mouths) and that Mullally’s Evelyn has long ago lost her vagina (which fell out, thus making her even more of a recluse who talks with the many tchotchkes she keeps around her home) and you have the making of a deliriously outrageous comedy.