Nathan Lane and Megan Mullally in Dicks: The Musical (Justin Lubin/A24)

For those partial to double entendres, Dicks: The Musical was the gift that kept on giving in movie-line conversations throughout this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. After the opening night premiere, Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron, director Larry Charles’s bawdy musical comedy was perhaps the next most eagerly anticipated, or at least most curiously titled, selection. With little competition, it became the rudest and crudest entry of the festival.

Warning: Viewers will have to suspend their disbelief that Craig and Trevor (played by the movie’s screenwriters Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson, respectively) are identical twins who were separated at birth, and that these two fboys are big business bros making the big bucks; the two are groomed and dressed like they are auditioning for a remake of Reality Bites. Working for the same vacuum company, Craig and Trevor compete for the title of the top salesman. However, their dueling alpha male bravado comes to a halt when it dawns on them that they are twins: They share the same birthday, and each possesses half of a matching locket. So, Craig and Trevor, taking a page out of The Parent Trap playbook, plot to reunite their parents.

Dressed as if she’s wearing everything she has ever bought at Goodwill, their mother and former grave robber, Evelyn (Megan Mullally), has gone bonkers long ago. Oh, and she has no vagina. She keeps it in her purse. (Don’t ask.) While dad, Harris (Nathan Lane)—a red wine–swilling, smoking jacket–clad, wealthy gay man—has become the devoted guardian to two miniature, diaper-wearing Sewer Boys, two grotesque creatures that he keeps locked in a cage. (Yes, he found them in the sewer and considers them his children.) 

Not surprisingly for screenwriters who honed their comedic skills at the New York improv theater Upright Citizens Brigade, the humor ranges from the raunchy to the grotesque. The jokes that land (a movie theater marquee promoting: “A24 Presents Everyone, Everywhere Cum All at Once”) and those that miss are about 50/50. The film succeeds though in sending up earnest but bland contemporary Broadway musicals (Groundhog Day, The Bridges of Madison County) with scores that are neither pop nor Tin Pan Alley. Yet the composers—Jackson and Sharp, along with Marius de Vries and Karl Saint Lucy—tip the hat to Rodgers and Hammerstein in a number given to MVP Mullally. She also has another big moment, with a lovely, gospel-flavored ballad, “I’m So Lonely,” which she belts as her tchotchkes come to life and sing along. Lane razzle dazzles in “Gay Old Life.” Now if only these two would star in a straight, ahem, musical. And in a change of pace musically, Megan Thee Stallion, as the twins’ boss, grinds to the hip-hop dance number “Out-Alpha the Alpha.”

Mullally, Lane, and Megan Thee Stallion give it their best with gusto. They are slumming it with glee and are a welcome counterbalance to the incessant mugging by Jackson and Sharp. These three know exactly the type of movie they’re in, one that goes out of its way to offend. Wait until you see a bleached-blond Bowen Yang as a party boy God—pearl clutchers, you have been warned. It will be a challenge for the producers of next year’s Academy Awards telecast to handle a performance of these cheeky songs, if any get nominated; the bleeper will have a lot of work. After all, the movie’s based on a stage show first called Fucking Identical Twins. 

The best way to enjoy this four-letter-word-filled frolic is probably to be inebriated. (This reviewer could have used a drink while watching it.) Even if you don’t remember much of it the morning after, it will be difficult to erase the closing image of Evelyn’s vagina flapping its labia lips like a butterfly, soaring off to the heavens. And wait for the outtakes during the closing credits. They provide as many laughs as the preceding movie.