TIFF trades standing ovations for flying genitalia at Dicks: The Musical premiere

This is not to say that the absolutely unhinged nature of Dicks: The Musical’s TIFF screening distracted from the very serious movement happening in Hollywood right now. Sharp continued his introduction by thanking SAG-AFTRA for providing his film with a last-minute interim agreement to appear at the festival, as well as A24 for “making a fucking deal that a trillion dollar tech company won’t.” Director Larry Charles, who couldn’t be in attendance, also hailed the film as “the most anti-AI, pro-human movie of the 21st century” via a note read from Aaron Jackson’s (broken) phone.

The good times apparently didn’t stop when the lights went down. With a title like Dicks: The Musical, the film itself—which also stars Megan Thee Stallion, Nathan Lane, Megan Mullally, Bowen Yang, and a pair of humanoid monsters called “The Sewer Boys”—was obviously an overly surreal and irreverent affair, with one early review hailing it as “destined for cult status.”

Sharp and Jackson seem to know this, as they surprised audiences by playing the film out with an unexpected—but expectedly chaotic—appearance by 17 members of the Forte, Toronto Gay Men’s Chorus to sing along to the final song “All Love is Love,” amongst audience members and falling inflatable penises.

Whether or not The Sewer Boys are your cup of tea, it’s nice to see this sort of untrammeled chaos introduced back to the theater. Between this on one side of the spectrum and Oppenheimer’s IMAX domination on the other, Cinema really is so back.