Review of Tintin starring Jamie Bell.
Hergé’s lovable characters provide thrills but dead-eyed motion-capture saps the life from The Adventures of Tintin.
Voice actors Jaime Bell and Andy Serkis provide laughs but soulless motion-capture ruins film.
Sometime during the two years of post-production work; bouncing between the countless motion-capture technicians and digital designers, Tintin (voice of Jamie Bell), the globe-trotting boy reporter created by Belgian artist Hergé (the pen name of Georges Remi) back in 1929, loses his trademark button eyes, stubby nose and comical cowlick for a dead-eyed blend of computer-assisted animation more interested in photo-realistic details of the threads on Tintin’s clothes, the pores of his skin and each individual red hair on his head.
Avatar-style motion-capture moviemaking can dazzle the eye but one expects more from The Adventures of Tintin; director Steven Spielberg's first 3D movie, especially for his first directing job in close to four years. Tintin, collaboration between Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson, is a cartoon variation of Indiana Jones without the emotionally rich hero for audiences to embrace.
It's often difficult to introduce characters in what's planned as a future movie franchise but co-writers Joe Cornish (Attack the Block), Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and Steven Moffat (Doctor Who) do a good job rolling out the boy reporter Tintin, his clever dog Snowy, his relationship with the booze-swilling seaman Captain Haddock (voice of Andy Serkis) and their battle over hidden treasure with the menacing Ivanovich Sakharine (voice of Daniel Craig).
Pulling plots from three Tintin comic books, "The Crab with the Golden Claws," "The Secret of the Unicorn" and "Red Rackham's Treasure," Tintin and Haddock follow clues hidden inside the model of an old frigate called the Unicorn in order to find the treasure hidden by Haddock’s ancestor before Sakharine. Along the way, there’s a daring lifeboat escape from Haddock’s freighter, a boat plane crashes into the African desert and a rollicking chase on a motorcycle through the narrow alleys of a North African town.
Jaime Bell provides an earnest voice as the boy hero who talks to his dog — a that dog seems to understand what he's saying — but it’s Andy Serkis who provides much-appreciated laughs as the voice of the clownish Haddock.
Hergé’s classic characters are great. The humor is clever, especially a gag where an opera singer breaks a bulletproof glass case with her singing voice; and the plot swiftly-paced leading to a climactic battle atop shipyard loading cranes but the artwork fails to honor the distinctive look of Hergé’s world.
There are two Spielberg movies in theaters this holiday, something of a Spielberg vs. Spielberg battle for audiences. The Adventures of Tintin may be the bigger spectacle but his adaptation of the acclaimed play War Horse, a World War I melodrama about a teen soldier in search of his beloved horse, is the better of the two.
Still, to Spielberg and Jackson’s credit, The Adventures of Tintin is impressive motion-capture work, far better than recent titles Mars Needs Moms and Beowulf but it's dead-eyed motion-capture just the same without any of the 3D dazzle of James Cameron’s Avatar.
Once the lengthy credits roll across the screen, listing the army of technicians responsible for making The Adventures of Tintin, you’ll leave the theater wishing it was a live-action movie.
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Cast: Jamie Bell, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis, Nick Frost and Toby Jones
Screenwriter: Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, from the original characters by Hergé
Director: Steven Spielberg
Art Directors: Andrew L. Jones, Jeff Wisniewski
Editor: Michael Kahn
Producers: The Kennedy/Marshall Company, WingNut Films, Amblin Entertainment, Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures Running Time: 107 minutes
Rating: Rated PG
Release Date: December 21, 2011