"Raiders of the Lost Ark" if Indy was young and Belgian

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2012)

Spielberg digitally exercises his penchant for highly elaborate action sequences in this adaptation of the Belgian serial cartoon. The media allows the director to supersize these set pieces to epic proportions including floods and entwined flying sailing ships. Your reaction to the movie will largely depend on whether you find such rapidly unrolling mayhem exhilarating or tiresome. One suspects the film will split somewhat along gender lines with boys, in particular, finding the flying machines and crashing cars to be a good time. A note to parents that the action here, like "Raiders of the Lost Ark", is served up with a pretty healthy degree of gunfire and alcohol consumption by Captain Haddock and, oddly, Tintin's dog "Snowy." If the film has the feel of "Raiders", it surreptitiously cribs the entire main action sequence from "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End." In fact, the use of digit special effects, the presence of pirates and entangled, burning boats make the sequences difficult to tell apart. In short, the film isn't quite the "event" that Spielberg envisioned but it is solidly entertaining in that old-fangled cliffhanger serial way.