The Adventures of Tintin Reviews (2011)

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Prior to seeing Steven Spielberg's film, I could count the number of things I knew about The Adventures of Tintin on one hand. I imagine most American audiences probably knew even less than I did. Tintin, the creation of a Belgian artist/writer who worked under the pen name Hergé, is a wildly popular property in Europe and throughout pockets of the rest of the world, but America's exposure to Hergé's original comics is, at best, slight. A cartoon series on Nickelodeon did a bit to help up the exposure a bit in the States, but even that was still but a blip on the overall pop culture radar. Like football (soccer) and warm beer, Tintin seemed the sort of thing unable to penetrate the collective mindshare of the notoriously fickle, sometimes obnoxiously dismissive American audience--myself included.

After having seen Spielberg's adaptation of Hergé's work--specifically, the film is based on the comic The Secret of the Unicorn--my hope is that this will spark some kind of new-found interest among previously disinterested Americans. This is a delightful adventure, packed with thrilling action sequences, intriguing mystery, and colorful, cartoonishly crazed characters that, thankfully, don't require much foreknowledge of the source material to appreciate. I took my girlfriend, who grew up watching the cartoon series, to see the movie for fear I might not grasp some reference or another. That turned out to be unnecessary, as Spielberg has found a great way to introduce the world to Tintin anew, with no prior knowledge necessary. As she put it to me as we exited the theater, "It's just a really fun adventure with some really funny characters. How hard is that to understand?" Touché.

To be fair, the movie's set-up really is that simple. After a lovely traditionally animated opening credit sequence, we meet the movie's titular hero (voiced by Jamie Bell) and his terrier sidekick, Snowy. It takes maybe five minutes of screen time to explain Tintin's vocation in life. He's a journalist, renowned for his great adventures and knack for solving complex, world-reaching crimes. This, despite the fact that he looks about 14 years old. For all I know, he could just be a very young 30. His agelessness is never explained; we are expected to just kind of roll with it.

Here, Tintin immediately stumbles into a web of mysterious criminality after purchasing an old model ship from a street vendor. Within seconds of the purchase, two shadowy individuals each appear sequentially to try to buy it off of the boy/man, but Tintin refuses. Sensing a potential story, Tintin begins to dig deeper into the history of this ship, and a legend of the real ship it was based on. A legend of treasure, death, and curses. Naturally.

For those unaware of the Secret of the Unicorn book, I won't spoil the details of the mystery that follows, because it's actually a pretty fun one to unravel, not to mention ludicrously dangerous. However childlike Tintin may appear, this is one man-child who isn't afraid to throw down. He carries a gun, and is shot at frequently; he trades fisticuffs with thugs three times his size; he even figures out how to fly a seaplane, mostly by guessing. It's precisely the kind of silly, yet endangering action Spielberg once made his career off producing, most notably with the early Indiana Jones films. To say that Adventures of Tintin reminded me a lot of those movies is perhaps the best compliment I can pay it.

Spielberg gives Tintin ample time to shine as the film's solo hero, but he's not alone. This story introduces Captain Haddock, a mainstay of the franchise (here voiced by a virtually unrecognizable Andy Serkis) whose bumbling behavior and anti-sobriety agenda make up the comic relief portion of the equation. He's essentially Sallah with a featured role and a more aggressive drunkenness. I cannot stress that part enough. To Haddock, sobriety is the equivalent of contracting lycanism.

Serkis is phenomenal in this part. His Haddock is essentially a sad clown, a man so beaten down by failure that all he has left is his boat, his bottle, and a healthy, self-deprecating sense of humor. Serkis is the easy standout, but the rest of the cast is similarly great. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost ably voice the bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson, a pair whose crime-solving abilities fall toward the side of purely accidental. Daniel Craig, also mostly unrecognizable, voices the sneering villain Ivan Sakharine with an unusual, yet fantastic viciousness.

If there is any flaw to be found with The Adventures of Tintin, it comes in the form of Spielberg's decision to use motion capture animation to create his characters. I've laid bare my opinions on this format elsewhere on this site, but to put it briefly for those unaware: I hate it. Few directors have ever crossed the uncanny valley into a realm where the motion-captured creatures on screen looked anywhere near realistic, let alone watchable. Spielberg is the first director to truly create a balance between the cartoon look of the source material, and the more realistic animations of the actors being captured. It's not perfect, mind you. Tintin's head in particular looks a bit strange--a bit like a flesh-colored egg, really--and sometimes the goofier character models seem oddly juxtaposed against the sometimes very realistic looking violence.

At the same time, this form of animation does also lend itself toward some rather thrilling, physics-defying action. Weird as it might occasionally look, it's hard to argue with the roller coaster ride approach Spielberg takes with his action sequences. There are at least a half-dozen great action scenes, though nothing tops a particularly harried jaunt through a Moroccan city featuring motorcycles, rocket launchers, a tank, a rush of destructive water, and a thieving eagle. Trust me when I say that to say any more would spoil the fun. You should just see it for yourself.