Great holiday fun from a premiere director

Rating: Null/10 (23 December 2011)

Tintin: "How's your thirst for adventure, Captain?" Captain Haddock: "Unquenchable."
My best overall entertainment for the family at 2011 holiday time goes to Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. The motion-capture and 3-D enhance the action, ramp it up if you will so that you are immersed in the action and wondering at how life-like the characters are even though animated.
Director Spielberg was reading the international serial books about young reporter/sleuth, Tintin, by Belgian artist Hergé, while working on his Indiana Jones franchise. It's easy to see the influences on both sides especially Spielberg's enduring child-like enthusiasm for adventure and his mastery of the camera point of view. We soar with planes and birds and spend not inconsiderable time up close with those expressive faces.
As in the originals, this Tintin adaptation, set in mid-twentieth Europe, is episodic with numerous mini adventures young hero Tintin (Jamie Bell) goes through to find a 17th-century treasure that 1/3 of the map he found in a model ship points to. Sir Frances Haddock (Andy Serkis) long ago planted three parts of the map, and a sodden contemporary descendant, Captain Haddock (Serkis), helps Tintin and faithful dog, Snowy, recover his family's fortune and reputation.
The action is non-stop, from motorcycle to seaplane (most of the vehicles Indiana Jones used as well), and the humor is pleasantly understated:
Captain Haddock: "So you thought you'd sneak in an' catch me with me trousers down, eh?" Tintin: "Would rather you kept your trousers on if it's all the same to you."
Most of all it's Spielberg's infectious enthusiasm that carries the picture. If for nothing else, enjoy the visual references to his earlier movies like Jaws and Indiana Jones and marvel how storyteller Spielberg can adapt a well-known series, and with the help of computer graphics, imitate a world so much like his own.
(in a plane) Captain Haddock: "You do know what you're doing, right?" Tintin: "Relax. I interviewed a pilot once!"