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  • Is it age appropriate?

    About our ratings

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    Not age appropriate for kids under 8, age appropriate for kids over 10; suggested age 10.

  • Is it any good?

    4.0

  • Common Sense says

    Artful, colorful, light comics adaptation.

Why We Rated This on for Ages 10 and Up

The good stuff

  • Messages:

    Dick Tracy is an upstanding and incorruptible lawman, even if he does seem a little tempted away from his girlfriend Tess Trueheart by both the work and the sexy Breathless Mahoney. Ultimately, the mousy, unassertive Tess proves a better love interest than the bold, brassy Breathless, a real old-school Hollywood attitude. A street kid Tracy befriends (who was forced into theft, a la Oliver Twist) looks up to Tracy's virtuous qualities and helps him in crimefighting. High city officials are revealed as corrupt and compromised. The gangsters in particular are grotesquely ugly, not the suave, smooth criminals glamorized in other crime pictures.
 

What to watch out for

  • Violence:

    "Cartoon violence" in the truest sense. Lots of machine-gun shooting, high-energy fist-fighting and mob hits, via both gunfire and explosions. No blood shown.

  • Sex:

    Madonna in particular plays a seductive singer who utters frequent suggestive double-entendres and dresses in low-cut, chest-revealing and skin-tight outfits.

  • Language:

    Not an issue.

  • Consumerism:

    A line of action figures, vintage Dick Tracy cartoons, and toy tie-ins were peddled heavily -- and some of the aggressive marketing backfired when activists complained about the demeaning depictions of minorities and the homeless. At least the Two-Way Wrist radios didn't offend anyone.

  • Drinking, drugs, & smoking:

    Social drinking and smoking.
 

What Parents Need to Know

About Dick Tracy

Parents need to know that there is considerable cartoon-bloodless shooting, bombing, and fighting. Plus, Madonna's lusty character sports an erotic wardrobe. The singer-actress, dating Warren Beatty at the time, was at the height of her self-crowned sex-goddess persona, though her antics stay within PG range. You may not come across them these days, but a series of vintage Dick Tracy cartoons (by the creator of Felix the Cat) and modern-day action figures, peddled in connection with this feature caused controversy for some demeaning racial and social stereotypes (the "Joe the Tramp," figure was a monstrously ugly homeless man).

Did this review help you decide?

Families Can Talk About

  • Families can talk about the surreal style of the film. Does it succeed in being a comic-strip come to life? And which one do kids enjoy better anyway? Would a more "realistic" incarnation of Dick Tracy have been effective? You can, in fact, expose kids to earlier, 1930s and '40s B-movies such as Dick Tracy, Detective and Dick Tracy Vs. Cueball (commonplace on video) that were indeed more down-to-earth productions, far less fantastic than Warren Beatty's vision.
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