The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (***½)
Directed
by: Steven Spielberg
Starring
(voices): Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Toby
Jones, Gad Elmaleh
Seen:
December 27th 2011
***½
Out of ****
Master director Steven Spielberg, with his Indiana Jones action
adventure background, couldn’t have made a more entertaining Tintin movie if he
tried. The Adventures of Tintin is a spellbinding 107 minutes of visual and
comedic entertainment. Even though this is animated, some of Spielberg’s
signatures are still highly visible: the sweeping camera movements I first
noticed in War of the Worlds (which I loved) as well as the beautiful light
flares that’s been part of almost all of his movies (recently also incorporated
in the JJ Abrams sci-fi movie Super 8, produced by Spielberg). Tintin is a
visual spectacle that echoes Speilberg’s love of the Tintin comics, which he
discovered in 1981 after a review compared it to Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Opening at an outdoor market, a pickpocket is plying his trade before
we are introduced to Tintin (Bell) sitting for a drawing of himself; an exact
replica of him from the comics –cheeky, but brilliant. Tintin purchases a
replica of the Unicorn, a beautiful three mast ship from legend, but from
nowhere Ivan Sakharine (Craig) offers to purchase the model from him at twice what
he paid; Tintin refuses, proud of his acquisition. When the ship is stolen from
Tintin’s home that afternoon, his investigative instincts pick up, and Tintin
goes after the larger story when a man is murdered on his doorstep.
What Tintin discovers is much
bigger than he initially could have guessed, and through clues gained both from
keen investigation and help from Tintin’s faithful dog Snowy, it leads to an
adventure that takes him out to sea, into the desert, through Morocco and back
to Europe. On the way Tintin meets Captain Haddock (Serkis), a ship captain doing
nothing but drinking in the aftermath of mutiny on his ship, and together the
two stumble along after the villainous Sakharine as he quests to find the
Secret of the Unicorn. Haddock is shown to be the ancestor of Sir Frances
Haddock, who captained the Unicorn when the pirate Red Rackham tried to rob the
ship of its valuable cargo, and Sakharine is after the model ships and Haddock
to solve the mystery and find the riches.
Tintin is fantastically animated, with the staggering scale of the
animation never really sinking in while the movie is in progress. The set-pieces
are unbelievable and the inventive nature of rolling from one scene to the next
had me completely captivated (the air conditioner in the theatre was out, but I
barely noticed the heat). The uncanny valley (that area where animation is
almost like real life humans, but not entirely) makes an appearance now and
then on Tintin, but for the most part all the other characters are either
cartoonish enough or realistic enough to capture the viewer without any
afterthought, especially Haddock, who is excellently and comically animated.
For sheer adventure and fun you can’t go wrong with Tintin, an amazing
thrill-ride of a movie, and one that I will watch numerous times in years to
come. I can also not wait for the sequel, set to be directed by now producer Peter
Jackson, the man who brought us King Kong and the huge Lord of the Rings
Trilogy.
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