A Fine Mess

Rating: 6/10 (16 January 2017)

A kidnapping and a mutiny kick off the start of what becomes a dangerous and profitable journey for that most famous of Belgian boy detectives and his loyal fox terrier, Snowy.
What you get in the end is minor Spielberg and minor Tintin. At least its heart is in the right place.
As a drink-plagued captain with a bulbous nose tells his young friend: "You care about something, you fight for it. You hit a wall, you push through it."
Here's hoping they follow their own advice and come up with a long- awaited sequel!
Revisiting the joys of childhood can be a perilous experience, and so it proves here, even if what's good outweighs what's bad. Director Steven Spielberg serves up an enjoyable lark of a cartoon adventure featuring that marvel of European comics, Tintin. If it lacks the cohesion and charm of Hergé's original, it keeps you in your seat till the end.
Spielberg's enthusiasm and talent is on bright display. Too bad the film veers more in the direction of his old "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" than Tintin himself. This adventure involves three lost scrolls which together present a key to finding a great treasure. To get them, Tintin (Jamie Bell) and his new friend, Captain Haddock (a note-perfect Andy Serkis) will have to brave the wiles of the evil Sakharine (Daniel Craig), a "sour-faced man with a sugary name."
I'm not a fan of motion-capture animation, even well-done animation such as this, which is presented with a nod to Hergé's "clear-line" style. Colors are deliciously bright, with a strong sense of depth and detail in every frame. Yet the adjustment from print to film medium gives the original characters a whiff of the grotesque.
After some opening credits that employ the clear-line style as well as a John Williams score and animation that seems a nod in the direction of Spielberg's classic beginning to "Catch Me If You Can," we are dropped quickly into our fast-moving story. Hergé himself pops up to say the first line of dialogue, seemingly blessing the enterprise with his presence, before Tintin finds himself in a case of mast distraction involving a search for a missing piece of a ship model.
This opening section is so enjoyable you wish it could continue forever. It does last a while, all the way up to the point where Tintin and Haddock fly a seaplane in the desert wastes of Bagghar. There's a couple of welcome appearances from the Thom(p)sons (Nick Frost and Simon Pegg), and some harrowing battles that allow the director to recycle old tricks in motion-capture form.
Humor, too. Asked if he can fly a plane, Tintin replies: "I interviewed a pilot once!" Haddock and Snowy later vie for a drop of the hard stuff in zero-G, a film highlight.
After that, Indiana Jones takes over. The result is too crowded and chaotic by half. In a March 2015 review here, jc-osms describes his "battle fatigue" with some of the setpiece action scenes, and I heartily concur. As dams burst and derricks clash, Hergé's gentler approach is missed.
But "The Adventures Of Tintin" did connect with audiences, especially outside Spielberg's native land. That provides motive for a long-promised sequel, hopefully involving second-unit director and co-producer Peter Jackson, who unlike Spielberg grew up reading Tintin and will perhaps invest a film with more of the original spirit, like he did with his Tolkien adaptations.
As it is, I don't think the film stands well enough on its own to be remembered. But as a foundation stone, it could yet prove the start of something quite grand and fun for generations of Tintin fans yet unborn.