Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty, 1990)

[MyNameCriterionForum]

It's a clever, stylish effort, but not a great film. Beatty seems a sly guy.

The original strip is extraordinary -- more violent and surreal (BY FAR) than any Hollywood film until David Lynch, frankly. And proof that unironic squares - not outre bohemians - make the best artists.

[Cold Bishop]

Is there a good collection of the original strips. I've always been interested, but never gotten around to finding one.

[MyNameCriterionForum]

There's a pretty famous "best of" - The Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy - that's a good sampling, and which many libraries likely have. But the strip has recently begun a complete reprinting (two years at a time in tidy little volumes) as The Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy (volume 1, 2, etc.)

[gubbelsj]

There was an additional "best-of" collection released in 1990 by St. Martin's Press called Dick Tracy Casebook: Favorite Adventures 1931-1990, with an entire sequence selected from each decade. It had a limited print, but it, too, may still be found in libraries (it's fetching hefty prices online, at least for "new" copies). I received this as a Christmas gift shortly after the Beatty movie's release, and fell head over heels in love with the strip. The entire series, from Idea and Design Works, mentioned by MyNameCriterionForum above, looks stunning.

[Ovader]

Tribune is back in court asking that the television the movie rights are handed back to them as Warren Beatty, apparently reneged on a contractual deal to produce a television special following the film.

Warren Beatty Wins Dick Tracy Lawsuit

[knives]

For fans of crazy people being crazy TCM is showing Beatty's court mandated 'special' tomorrow after the film.

[domino harvey]

Blu-ray on December 11

[domino harvey]

Revisited this for the first time since I was seven, so it was functionally a first time viewing. I was immediately struck by how the bizarre editing and pacing present in Beatty’s Rules Don’t Apply was the same here— as in that film, it’s obvious that Beatty filmed a whole lot of material that didn’t make it into the final product and the assembly here as there has zero breathing room or grace notes but does possess an unusual energy nevertheless. As for the rest of the film, it’s a mixed bag: the incredible art direction and costuming within a bright and gaudy yet limited color palette steal the show and are the whole reason to even watch this (and to be clear, the look of this film truly justifies seeing it even if the script can’t do more with it). The much-lauded makeup is well-done but also disorienting weird and occasionally terrifying depending on the deformities depicted! And since it’s kind of a musical, it’s nice that Sondheim’s songs are pretty good too. But the stunt casting misses more than it hits and turns into a Where’s Waldo exercise (and everyone gets spoiled in the opening credits, so there’s not even the fun of figuring them all out), with Dustin Hoffman in particular giving a deeply annoying perf, but Madonna is surprisingly the best thing here… which prob says more about the slumming cast than her

[beamish14]

It’s probably the very last big-budget Hollywood film of the pre-CG era, and I love how slavish Beatty was to Chester Gould’s art. There is one scene with a car traveling all along the contours of a matte painting that I just adore. I agree that there probably was/is a much better film than what was commercially released, and I really don’t care much for the final action set piece before the very sweet final moments.

One of my favorite quips in any film:

“No grief for Lips?”

“I’m wearing black underwear.”

[colinr0380]

But the stunt casting misses more than it hits and turns into a Where’s Waldo exercise (and everyone gets spoiled in the opening credits, so there’s not even the fun of figuring them all out), with Dustin Hoffman in particular giving a deeply annoying perf, but Madonna is surprisingly the best thing here… which prob says more about the slumming cast than her

The way to do the "Where's Waldo?" thing is probably the way that The List of Adrian Messenger did it, with all the reveals at the end. Although I found the first time though the John Huston film that wondering who was who completely distracted me from paying any attention to the film, so that can be its own drawback!

And Todd in the Shadows agrees with your take on Dick Tracy being Madonna's best film, and Madonna probably the best thing about it. Even if as he says she's just playing a live action version of Jessica Rabbit. "It's Sin City.. but for little kids" is a good description of it!

[The Curious Sofa]

Describing something as Madonna's best film/performance is probably damning it with faint praise. I always thought this was received far more generously than it deserved, but Warren Beatty still commanded a great deal of respect back then. While a lot of work went into the look of the film, there always is something labored about trying to make live-action ape a cartoon and the plot and characters barely register.

I feel similar about Altman's Popeye, though Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall at least hold their own against the stultifying artifice. Tim Burton's Batman Returns, while also flawed, did a far better job with a highly stylized comic book movie a couple of years after Dick Tracy.