ANIMATED EXTRAVAGANZA 3 : DICK TRACY!

Ok, ok I know. Technically, this is NOT an animated film. But even if it’s not actually a cartoon, it was part of a cartoon strip. Heck, it was adapted from a cartoon strip! Come on be honest, anyone who was familiar with Dick Tracy before Warren Beatty brought him to life knew him in cartoon form. (I should have specified of course, out of the many incarnations of the cartoon detective, we are interested today in the 1990 incarnation vie Warren Beatty – another example of someone directing a film and playing the lead in it… However, since this is Dick Tracy we’re talking about, he naturally gets the limelight so there’s nothing much to complain about… Humph… ). And besides, have you actually seen the movie? Remember all the villains? Big Boy, Mumbles and the rest of the mob? They were all made up to look like cartoons for crying out loud, the films won an Oscar® for its’ art direction! By the way ,if you watch this one, please note how sometimes the shots of the town look like cutouts or drawings… The brightly colored costumes too… I loved it, LOVED it… But less of my rambling on and on, you want to hear about the film.
Dick Tracy… You all know him, out on the streets, fearlessly fighting the bad guys, saving the day, putting the mobsters in jail… Well, things turn a bit nasty for him when the notorious Big Boy Spaldoni (played by a very made up and superbly “over acting” Al Pacino) takes over the underworld making himself the boss of a very powerful, dark empire. He is preparing to hold the entire city to ransom and Tracy is the only one who can stop him! Tracy has problems however. His long term girl friend Tess Trueheart wants to settle down and for him to take a nice, safe desk job. There’s “the kid” a nameless orphan he has rescued from the street but who he can’t seem to get rid of. Then there’s a rather stunning gangster’s Moll (played by an equally stunning Madonna) who is desperately trying to get him… Not in the “gangster” sense though. Will Tracy save the day? Or has he finally met his match in Big Boy Spaldoni?
You can take this movie in a number of ways and one of them is almost definitely a spoof gangster film. I mean yes, it has all the classic marks of Dick Tracy, heck, Warren Beatty is a pretty good choice for Tracy; he even looks like him. But one can’t help seeing the irony in Al Pacino playing Big Boy Spaldoni. He splutters, he is bad tempered he is one of the funniest mafia bosses ever to hit the screen and all this portrayed by the guy who played Toni Montana and Michael Corleone… I roared with laughter. Dustin Hoffmann has a nice little part as Mumbles – caricature of another kind of gangster, you will see what I mean when you watch it. As for Madonna and the songs well… Combine her voice and the talent of the famous score writer Dany Elfman small wonder the film won the Oscar ® for best song… What else can I tell you? Good guys vs bad guys, car chases, beautiful dames, big guns… The 50’s, best of the 50’s… You will LOVE it…