THIS YEAR, DISCOVER HOW FAR ADVENTURE WILL TAKE YOU.

When Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson hooked up to make the first truly ambitious screen adaptation of Hergé‘s classic comic-book hero, it was easy to expect the most humorless of fanboys to react negatively. One of the first people to comment on this movie was The Guardian’s Tom McCarthy and he sure didn’t let anyone down. A typical quote from his review: “It’s boring beyond belief. When all you’re looking at is pixels being shunted around a screen by some nerd in post-production, none of it counts.” Man, did McCarthy deliver an entertaining assassination piece… and man, is it irrelevant. You can never please a fanboy, but perhaps everybody else.

Finding a model ship of the Unicorn
At a market in Brussels, a young reporter, Tintin (Jamie Bell), finds a model ship of the Unicorn, a three-masted 17th-century navy vessel, and buys it cheaply. Two other men, including Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel Craig), offer him a lot more money for the ship, but Tintin refuses to sell. He brings it to his apartment where his dog Snowy accidentally pushes it over the edge of a cupboard; when one of the masts break, Tintin fails to notice a small steel canister fall out and roll behind the cupboard.

Shortly afterwards, someone breaks into the apartment and steals the model. Tintin doesn’t really trust his well-meaning but utterly incompetent friends in the police force, two detectives known as Thomson and Thompson (Simon Pegg, Nick Frost), to solve the case. Eventually, he finds the canister and an old map inside…

Action sequences tend to stack up
The writers borrowed elements from three different Tintin books and came up with a rollicking 3D adventure that stands on its own (except for the final scene’s expected sequel setup). Those books are likely chosen because they introduced our adventurous hero to his unlikely best friend, a drunken sailor called Haddock, for the first time. After watching Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Hergé wanted Spielberg to be the one to bring Tintin to the big screen. This adaptation is old-fashioned in that sense, which is a joy to behold, and it is more or less true to the tone of the comic books… but the action sequences tend to stack up. There’s so many of them, and the pace so frantic (to an almost tiring degree), that it’s as if Spielberg is desperately trying to prove to younger audiences that he’s not losing his touch; his fourth Indiana Jones suffered from the same problem. That said, those scenes are nevertheless carefully designed and genuinely exciting – and they should once and for all show both audiences and the industry that motion-capture animation is worth taking seriously.

Veteran Andy Serkis is on hand to guide his lesser experienced co-stars – and director who’s never made an animated film before. He’s spot-on and very funny as Haddock and makes a great couple together with Bell; their bruises and broken ribs prove how mo-cap involves a lot more acting than simple voice dubbing.

One of the film’s best parts is the opening, stylishly drawn credits set to one of John Williams’s most seductively French retro themes, followed by an animated Hergé as a street artist who’s capturing Tintin in a manner we instantly recognize. Even Tom McCarthy had to admit that it looks pretty astonishing.

The Adventures of Tintin 2011-U.S.-New Zealand. Animated. 107 min. Color. Widescreen. Produced by Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Kathleen Kennedy. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Screenplay: Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish. Comic Books: Hergé (“The Secret of the Unicorn”, “Red Rackham’s Treasure”, “The Crab With the Golden Claws”). Music: John Williams. Cast: Jamie Bell (Tintin), Andy Serkis (Captain Haddock), Daniel Craig (Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine), Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Toby Jones… Cary Elwes.

Trivia: In the 1980s, Spielberg intended to make a live-action version.

Golden Globe: Best Animated Feature Film.

Last word: “Our actors were wearing motion capture suits, they were wearing headgear with a little camera and dots on their faces. After laughing at each other for about 10 minutes and getting that out of their system, it’s just they’re performing characters. I think that is the secret of great acting: you have to bring your imagination to the party. You have to have a great imagination and you have to bring it every day when you’re working. Your imagination and your skills as an actor are what see you through, not what you’re wearing or where you are.” (Spielberg, About.com)

IMDb