The reason why I saw Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy movie three times when it came out in the summer blockbuster season of 1990 was because I was 13 and had an interest in “old stuff”, such as vintage jazz, fedoras, heavy topcoats and art deco. I was just poking the tip of my nose into the rabbit hole of antique swing music and early talkies, not yet knowing Duke Ellington from Eddie Cantor, but I was getting there. So, to my little teenage peanut head, this movie brought a vibe that I enjoyed. I even had a cheap Dick Tracy movie merch wrist radio (the AM/FM kind, not the kind that you talk into), but the farthest I could go into the past with it was the local oldies station.
The reason why I didn’t see the movie much again after 1990 is that it’s not very good. Nostalgia only goes so far. Even my wrist radio fell apart after a few months.
Here, Beatty plays Dick Tracy like a post-Brando brooder. He’s confident when he works for justice, but struggles for words to express any other emotion. There’s nothing wrong with that dramatically, but it doesn’t come within fifty miles of Chester Gould’s flat-nosed crewcut lawman and Dick Tracy’s relationship troubles flop like a dying fish on this film’s soggy dock. Meanwhile, like a vintage movie serial, the story here is so crayon-simple that it barely qualifies as a story. Dick Tracy fights the big city crime syndicate—and that’s it, Daddy-O. The plot, such as it is, is little more than an excuse to flaunt Richard Sylbert’s beautiful set design, which is dominated by bright primary colors and still stands twenty-five years later as the most eye-catching live-action imitation of a comic strip ever filmed. Sylbert is the real star here even as Beatty further distracts us from the void in the film’s heart cavity (he’s a remarkably witless director) with a crazy supporting cast filled with his iconic actor friends, everyone from James Caan to Dustin Hoffman to R.G. Armstrong, buried under make-up, in roles large and small. All play Chester Gould’s many imaginative villains and, with the exception of Al Pacino’s bug-eyed Big Boy Caprice, none get time to offer any personality past their appearance. The effect is closer to watching a costume party thrown by Beatty than a tight action flick. The music is good (Danny Elfman’s rousing score, Stephen Sondheim’s clever songs), the surroundings are sumptuous and Madonna stretches out a series of tight dresses well, but when it’s over you leave without having met a single interesting person.