Were it not for the explicit language, X-rated songs and a pair of monstrous puppets called The Sewer Boys, “Dicks: The Musical,” a raunchy new movie now playing in theatres, could have been a 1960s sitcom style family comedy about a pair of twins who conspire to get their estranged parents back together.
Instead, it’s a no-holds-barred ode to the likes of John Waters, attempting to find that sweet spot between shock and awe.
Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson are Craig and Aaron, two high-powered salespeople who meet for the first time when their company Vroomba! merges their two offices into one. They’re alpha males, sharks in tight suits and ultracompetitive, but one musical number later, they realize they share a birthday, looks and goals. They are long separated twins, one raised by their mother Evelyn (Megan Mullally), the other by father Harris (Nathan Lane). They concoct a plan to be a family again, to bring their parents back together, despite the fact that Evelyn keeps her winged genitals (you read that right) in a purse and Harris is gay and keeps The Sewer Boys, two toxic creatures he found in the NYC sewer, in a cage as his children.
“We didn’t realize being lied to your entire lives would be so upsetting,” says Harris.
Cue a barrage of crude jokes and a series of show tunes with double entendre titles like, “I’ll Always Be on Top” and “Love in All Its Forms” (“All love is gross/But all love is love.”) as this unconventional family discovers how to love again.
Originated as a two-hander theatre piece by Upright Citizens Brigade members Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson, “Dicks: The Musical” feels like an attempt at a Midnight Madness movie, but is more outrageous than actually funny. There are amusing moments, mostly courtesy of Mullally and Lane, who understand, unlike Sharp and Jackson, that not every line has to be delivered with the annoying enthusiasm of Woody Woodpecker in the midst of an amphetamine binge.
When Evelyn says, “I’m dumbfounded and flummoxed,” Harris sharply shoots back, “Those were always your best qualities.” It’s a classic set-up and response that raises a laugh because it is character based and delivered with panache. Unfortunately, the rest of the material is dispensed at a fever pitch, like a manic children’s show television host, creating a white noise that becomes tiresome early on.
“Dicks: The Musical” was probably a blast as a half-hour underground cabaret show, but on the big screen it feels stretched paper thin. For all its surrealist affectation, envelope pushing and yes, even blasphemy, it’s never as shocking as it wants to be.
I hosted a live Q&A with director Ari Aster in front of a sold-out crowd at the Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto on Wednesday night. For a taste, check out my radio show on the iHeartRadio Network Saturday night at 8 pm t0 9 pm for a recorded interview with the director.
Magnificent and confounding in equal measure, “Beau is Afraid,” a new, three-hour epic from “Midsommar” director Ari Aster and now playing in theatres, is a nightmarish trek through a mishmash of mommy issues, anxiety and tragedy. Imagine a paranoid “Lord of the Rings” style quest reimagined by Luis Buñuel with a darkly comedic “After Hours” vibe and a hint of Thomas “You Can’t Go Home Again” Wolfe and you’ll be on the road to understanding Beau’s surreal journey.
Joaquin Phoenix plays the title character, a neurotic, over-medicated man whose father died at the moment of his son’s conception. The loss forever colored his life, leaving him lost in a sea of paranoia and uncertainty. “I am so sorry for what your daddy passed down to you,” says his overbearing mother Mona (Patti LaPone).
Beau’s already chaotic life is forever changed by a missed plane, a new prescription and a home invasion. Set off on an odyssey to return home for his mother’s funeral, circumstance continually keep him off track. First, he finds himself the reluctant patient of affable suburban caregivers Roger and Grace (Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan), their troubled daughter (Kylie Rogers) and a war vet with PTSD.
Then, a narrow escape finds him in the embrace of a travelling experimental theater troupe whose storytelling transports him into an animated folk tale of searching, struggle and solace.
Finally, bloodied and bruised, he arrives home to confront his past, face his fears and come to grips with the trauma that hangs over his life like a shroud.
“Beau is Afraid” is a complicated movie, laden with allegory and symbolism, that confronts the aftereffects of loss and grief. It’s familiar terrain for Aster, whose previous films, “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” were also studies in intergenerational trauma.
But the new movie is anything but familiar.
It is a psychological dramedy that dives deep into how Beau’s trauma has molded every aspect of his life and lead to a breakdown, one we witness from his point-of-view, in real time. It’s a harrowing trip as Beau slowly loses his grip on reality, and his paranoia shapes the movie’s narrative.
Aster is uncompromising in his portrayal of Beau’s state of mind. His previous movies were more visually shocking, featuring images more aligned to traditional horror. “Beau is Afraid” has less overt horror. It’s more concerned with the psychological, the confusion, fear and anxiety that drives Beau. To convey this, Phoenix, in an internal performance, plays the character as a shell. The movie revolves around him and his state of mind, but he is a reactive character, one who responds to, rather than instigates, the action. It’s interesting, deeply felt work but the closed down, Chauncey Gardiner nature of the character makes him difficult to embrace.
Given the unsettled nature of the real world, audiences may understand, relate or sympathize with Beau’s all-encompassing fear, but the absurdism woven into Phoenix’s childlike performance, particularly in the film’s second half, wears thin.
“Beau is Afraid” is the weirdest film on Aster’s already proudly weird IMDB page. It may be the definition of a film that is not for everyone, but it cannot be faulted for its uncompromising vision. As a search for meaning in life, for closure from trauma, for freedom from fear, from relief from distended testicles (Yup! You read that right), it was never going to be a feel-good flick. So, instead, it swings for the fences, burrowing in on its grandiose emotional ideas even if it often feels like a three-hour panic attack.
Unpredictable, unexpected and ultimately, unexplainable, it’s challenging cinema that connects on a subconscious level.
It’s re-make a rama at the multi-plex this week. Kong is still doing big business and two other retreads are joining it on theatre marquees. The Producers started life as a very funny film by Mel Brooks starring Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel. Thirty years later a musical version of the story of the worst play ever mounted on the Great White Way helped revitalize the real-life Broadway. Unfortunately I don’t think the film version of The Producers will work the same magic in movie theatres and reverse the slump that theatres chains have been experiencing this year.
Fans of the stage version of The Producers will be pleased to have a faithful adaptation of the musical, starring Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick and several of the original Broadway cast, but stage and film are two different mediums, a fact that seems to be lost on director Susan Stroman. As a choreographer Stroman has a shelf full of Tony awards and has worked at the very highest levels on Broadway. As a film director she is a great choreographer. Her film version of the play feels like she simply pointed a camera at the stage and yelled action. There is little effort made to open the film up and take it outside the proscenium arch. When the movie does stray from the box-like confines of the stage we get our best sequences—a chorus line of elderly women on walkers in Central Park and a lavish production number for Broderick’s “I Want to be a Producer” number.
Lane and Broderick bring considerable charm and energy to their roles, but it feels like they are playing to the back of the house rather than to a camera. Ironically, The Producers, a story so rooted in the tradition of Broadway, would have benefited from a more Hollywood treatment.
