Even against today's movies, Dick Tracy (1990) stands on its own as a great example of the legendary newspaper comic strip hero.
Director/star Warren Beatty did a phenomenal job with brining this classic to life on the big screen, unfortunately not many knew who Dick Tracy was at the time, he'd been somewhat forgotten to the masses.
Produced by Disney Studios, but released
under their Touchstone banner, it has it's great points, it's bad points and it's incredibly bright points. One of the brightest points, aside from the costumes, was the MASSIVE marketing campaign, that began almost a year early with the teaser you see to the right, but a lot of movie goers were asking the question, "who the hell is Dick Tracy?" Disney went all out except in the way they needed to, informing the public of Tracy's history and the character of the man.
Then, in the early spring of 1990, another teaser poster was released, this one with a bit more bang...
Again, Disney was all over the marketing campaign, they were already working with fast food giant McDonald's for a toy release in their Happy Meals.
Then Disney did a marketing release that was beyond brilliant, a
special opening night ticket that would let everyone around you know you were going, a ticket ON a t-shirt (still got mine) and theater owners/managers encouraged all to wear their shirts all day opening day, now he was EVERYWHERE and IN MOTION, which has a big play on people's minds, it was a very successful opening weekend, but some of the reviews were mixed on the actual story.
Roger Ebbert raved about the lavish colors and the incredible fantasy world the film took us to, and he was correct, the film had NO actual live sets in the real world. Backlots, soundstages, giant mats, miniatures and straight up animation were used and in many combinations. It took over 4 months to design and create the costumes for the wild villains of Tracy's world.
But, who was Dick Tracy, finally some of the history started coming out, but after the films release rather than before. Tracy was the creation of Chicago cartoonist, Chuck Gould and the character was still owned and published by Tribune Media Service Inc. Gould's daughter spent time on the set and was thrilled with the accuracy and production of the film.
Another great part of the marketing was their association with co-star (and then Beatty girlfriend), Madonna, who portrayed, Breathless Mahoney (the other woman) to tempt Tracy away from longtime girlfriend Tess Trueheart, brilliantly played by the wildly underrated, Glenne Headly.
The regular soundtrack for the film was from SuperHero staple of the time, Danny Elfman, whose Batman soundtrack was an amazing success and what drew Beatty to lure him into working on Dick Tracy. The theme that Elfman came up with for Tracy himself was good but the overall soundtrack isn't his best work. When asked about working with Beatty, Elfman said, "Warren was insane." 😆
Oscar Winnier, Vitorio Slorano was brought in as the Cinematographer and took the comic strip and along with the set designers brought the legendary comic world to real life, it really sucked you in and made you feel it.
Like the comic strips, the story is short & sweet and gets to the point, although it was a one shot film, it used up all of Tracy's main villains in one big bang, leaving no room for sequels (which Beatty isn't a fan of anyway). But like some of the other period hero films of the early 90's (The Shadow, The Phantom) it stayed on point and was true to the character, thanks to writers Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr.
The cast was an incredible who's-who of major Hollywood names, Al Pacino portrayed the villain, the loud and crass, Big Boy Caprice. Dustin Hoffman as the mumbling Mumbles, who did an outstanding job for such a "quiet" role, the man is a true acting artist. William Forsythe as Flattop, one of Tracy's biggest enemies (second only to Big Boy) he was mainly used as just another hired gun. Mandy Patinkin, Dick Van Dyke and Paul Sorvino also played great parts.
Another interesting part of the film, something you might overlook at first, no brand names. A hotel was just "hotel" and even the city they are in is never named. Streets are all numbered and products have no brand names on them either, even the cars. This was a giant leap away from 80s Hollywood that really overdid a lot of their product placement (no wonder Wayne's World made such fun of it) but Beatty didn't want anything in there.
With a budget of just over $46M (small potatoes to films of today) it made $162.7M, not sure if that is up to date, but is a respectable amount given how little the masses knew about the character before release, the marketing campaign did a great bit of that.
Some still claim it was just a Disney vehicle for album and toy sales, an hour and fifty minute commercial for Madonna.... and toys, but it's so much more than that. The combination of filming styles and the mixing of animation into other parts of production really are a monumental achievement.
The film gets 🌟🌟🌟🌟 out of 5 stars, leaving one off because it left absolutely no room for a sequel to continue the legend of Tracy on the big screen. I pity the person who tries to do a remake/reboot of this one.
Critics felt that Beatty himself was a bit two dimensional as the character, but I thought he pulled it off just right, always sticking to Tracy's straight-arrow approach to The Law but also giving way for his co-stars to shine, to me, it was one of his more humble performances... but he was directing to 😎
This are just some of the posters that were produced to promote the film, there were many more, almost all the speaking cast got a poster. Disney would have done a bit better to produce a one season animated series to let the people know who Dick Tracy was. Personally, I feel that Tracy is one of the characters that Filmation should have done a run with from the late 70's to the early/mid 80's since they'd already done Tarzan, Lone Ranger, Zorro and Flash Gordon, it seems like a good fit for what they were doing then.
The toy line did not fare well, mainly because of lack of
knowledge of the character and his world with today's kids, and Madonna's outfits kept a lot of kids out of the theaters for the film itself, including a sheer robe that left almost nothing to the imagination. This is why an animated series leading up to the film, or after could have helped with the toy line.
But, like with other classic hero films of the early 90's I highly recommend this for anyone who hasn't seen it. Make sure to watch more than once so the second time you can look for all the different realms of production they went through and focus on the amazing special effects with make up! 👍
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