It was a magical summer for the box office.. June 1990; school was out ‘forever’ and the 1990s just began. While we did not have the luxury or burden based on your point of view of delving deep into the 90s yet, the future was bright we were still wearing shades.
And after several successful summers of box office glory for super heroes, Dick Tracy entered the fray.
Armed with his watch, yellow coat, and crime fighter ability, Warren Beatty donned the famed detective hat and have us, in our opinion, one of the greatest movies of all time. The magic of the film was its creativity, its style, its music, Madonna, but its colorful array of villians.
Back then we didn’t have ROTTEN TOMATOES, but instead we all trusted Siskel and Ebert. Here is what they thought about the movie in June 1990:
The movie was released on June 15, 1990 to great fanfare and buildup in fishwrappers across America. “Dick Tracy” (1990) grossed $103,738,726 domestically, ranking it 9th in worldwide box office for the year. It reached the #1 spot at the domestic box office during the week of June 15-21, 1990
By Christmas kids, including me, were asking for and getting DICK TRACY the NINTENDO game..
Playing with action figures. Except the BLANK. That was purposely sparely placed on store racks giving kids a false hope that one day they would find it.
We were lucky that year to see this movie in a theater for the first time. It created a sense of nostalgia for the oldtimers… and something new for younger people. It even made me read newspapers again! That summer papers across America re-published old Dick Tracy comics and I for one was using my summer time off to cut them out and create a collage. I wish I still had it today.
And we had the summer of Dick at McDonalds.. We were all led to believe we were crimestoppers and could win millions on their scratch offs!
Newspapers at the time even report about the nostalgia that the then released film was bringing back:
But what made that summer EVEN better? It was one of MANY films that came out that we still watch and talk about today.
Just think.. the hot summer 35 years ago were were watching TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, PRETTY WOMAN, and GREMLINS II. I will avoid being joyful about BACK TO THE FUTURE III, that one just didn’t hit great and today still has not caught on.
Yes indeed.. that summer was magical, vibrant.. and gave us Dick Tracy. An underrated classic that we still think holds up even in today’s times..
