“Pomegranates. Pomegranates.”

Justin’s rating: Are we finally in the Dick Tracy smartwatch era?

Justin’s review: Guys, he did it again.

So if you’ll recall, Warren Beatty snapped up the film rights to Dick Tracy in the ’80s, then licensed it to Disney to make the sort-of blockbuster in 1990. Since then, the original owners have been trying to get the rights back — perhaps to make another actual film — while Beatty’s been holding on to his favorite crime-fighting detective with all the strength in his gnarled, old man claws. With the rights set to expire in 2010 if he didn’t do something with it, Beatty slapped together the Dick Tracy Special for a single airing on TCM.

Then — and this is where the insanity ratchets up another notch — the same exact scenario happened in 2022. The rights were set to expire, and the octogenarian actor created a second sequel to his movie called Dick Tracy Special: Tracy Zooms In. One only assumes that when he hits 105, we’ll be treated to Dick Tracy Special: Back from the Grave.

The special kicks off with TCM host Ben Mankiewicz watching bits of the first special with film critic Leonard Maltin before fielding a Zoom call from Warren Beatty playing Warren Beatty and Warren Beatty playing Dick Tracy in his iconic getup that I suspect he stole from the movie set and never returned. At the same time. Truly, the technology of our world is being put to the best use.

Tracy is concerned that he didn’t do a great job with the first interview — an astute piece of self-observation — and wants a do-over. He’s also looking to patch up some bad blood that supposedly exists between Tracy and Beatty, which is so meta and weird and makes me wonder if Beatty is harboring a lot of self-loathing. Their fight, if you must know, was over “the seriousness of movies.”

“I never quite thought of crime as a musical comedy,” Tracy whines.

As Beatty argues with himself and frequently criticizes the film that he made, you can see both Mankiewicz and Maltin look increasingly uncomfortable and wishing that they could excuse themselves back to reality. The longer this went on — and it was the longest 24 minutes that I’ve spent in quite some time — the funnier it got hearing Beatty mutter like an angry man yelling at clouds without any actual script while the other two hosts sank to the lowest points in their respective careers.

Eventually, through the cutting edge power of split-screen, Beatty and Tracy have brunch together and patch up their differences and talk Dick Tracy Returns.

Completely surreal, Tracy Zooms In is nothing more and nothing less than the cinematic equivalent of a squatter hunkering down in an otherwise useful house and refusing to move. Maybe Beatty always dreamed of sniping at himself on camera, but is this really worth it?