Fantastic!

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Watching the feature film version of Dick Tracy Returns it becomes apparent how departed you are from the comic strip Dick Tracy and how appalling the serials were. It is just difficult to take any of it seriously.Dick Tracy works for the FBI and he is after Pa Stark, the head of the Stark gang. A rookie FBI agent is shot, but not to worry as Tracy states, he will be fine as he has been placed in an iron lung. The agent dies because no one posted any round the clock guards so Pa Stark sneaked in and pulled the plug on his iron lung.Then you get a scene of Tracy rounding up some bad guys only for his helper Junior shout 'well done Tracy' enabling the others to attack Tracy and Junior being taken hostage.It gets better when one bad guy leaves a briefcase with a bomb behind in Tracy's office with Tracy in another room guessing that the bad guy will slip out while leaving his briefcase behind, Junior runs after the bad guy who is getting away in his car, but he manages to throw the briefcase inside the car just before it explodes.It is all preposterous and silly, even nostalgia cannot save it. Thank goodness for the Warren Beatty version who salvaged Dick Tracy's cinematic reputation.

DICK TRACY RETURNS is a follow up to the original DICK TRACY, with Ralph Byrd returning to the title role alongside some of his peers. I watched the condensed film version of the story, which cuts out all of the cliffhanger endings and endless recaps of the previous instalments and makes for a more fluid watch, even if you lose some of the material at the same time.This time around, Tracy locks horns with the criminal Stark clan, presided over by the delightfully sinister Charles Middleton as Pa Stark. Middleton was well known for playing Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials and he makes for a good adversary here. Overall, the serial feels more polished than its predecessor, with plentiful action and special effects which hold up even in the 21st century. It has all of the humour, thrills, and spectacle you could wish for, and there's very little faffing about to boot.

Unlike the other three reviewers of this serial, I was quite disappointed.But let me start with a good point. At least the writers came up with a plausible set of characters for the bad guys. The Stark Gang is a noticeable improvement over the Spider (with his tattoo-flashlight signature on the forehead of his victims) and the Lame One (with his three-inch sole added to his shoe and stuttering step) of the original Tracy serial. But there the writers lost their sense of originality and commitment to a believable story. All they did was come up with ten or so special new inventions (super fast boat, special airplane engine, have the Stark gang mysteriously find out about it, have them contact the agent for a 'foreign power' (I guess in '38 you couldn't yet say Germany or Japan - FDR was still keeping the US neutral then, only to have Tracy and his men foil their plans. Then, on to the next episode with a 'insert here' new super special device. One decent story arc throughout the entire 15 chapter - like the Arc Indiana Jones goes after in Raiders (which Lucas and Spielberg supposedly fashioned after these serials) would have been much, much more engaging. The cliffhanging ends of the episodes were also very hackneyed. In virtually all cases, you could predict how Tracy once again cheated death. Car over the cliff? Simple: insert a shot of him jumping out just before it goes over. (And don't worry that he is seemingly unhurt even though the car was going 40+mph). But what REALLY irked me for this one was that unlike most 15 chapter serials that include one 'clip show' episode that reprises events from prior chapters (thus only giving more work to the editor, and sparing all the rest of the crew - hence, saving money), this serial had TWO such episodes. Way to bail on even a modicum of believable credibility, writers! Overall, 5/10

In this sequel to the 1937 serial ( and a heck of a lot better ), Tracy is on the trail of Pa Stark ( Charles Middleton gives a great performance ) and his five sons. After killing a rookie G-Man, Tracy goes after the youngest son ( aptly named the Kid ) and through out the serials he battles the enemy agents and saboteurs Stark is mixed up with to bring the master criminal to justice. Very action packed, but it does contain some corny scenes, but anything was better than the previous entry. In terms of serials, 8 out of 10.