Weak on suspense, plotting, atmosphere and characters but has some great set-pieces and is enjoyable for its constant movement and noise

Rating: Null/10 (1 September 2013)

Like many others, I grew up on the Tintin books although I didn't really have strong feelings about this film one way or the other; I didn't see the character as something to be protected nor something to get excited about seeing in a film, although I was interested. Happy to wait till I could get it at home (and then some) I watched this recently and did so with the knowledge that the commercial and critical response to the film's release last year maybe hadn't been all everyone was hoping. The plot sees Tintin buying a model ship that several people seem very keen to get their hands on. This simple purchase leads to murder and soon he is caught up in a race to uncover treasure before the mysterious Sakharine can find it first.
The film offers a decent story with core parts of it coming directly from the original books but mostly it doesn't do a great job of delivering it. There isn't a strong base to the plot and there isn't really anything that made me invest in what I was watching. This was ironically caused by what the film did pretty well, which was to deliver near constant movement. The film does have some very well constructed and delivered set-pieces which flow really well and look great in terms of the spectacle and the way the "camera" moves around them. There is the problem that there is almost too many of them and at times the film feels too frantic and with too little peril or investment. It is not because it is animated, it can happen with films where the characters just seem to never really be in danger. It is very good as a family- friendly action movie though and although I found it not to be particularly memorable, I did find it enjoyably light and fluid.
The animation is quite amazing in terms of how realistic it looks. There is still a very odd look to the characters, where they are realistic enough to forget they are animated but not so realistic that they stop looking a little bit weird. This would have maybe been a problem if the film spent long on the characters but to be honest it all moves so fast we're never lingering long on the characters. The voice work is OK but most of them struggle because they don't have a lot of character or fun dialogue – even Haddock is a little less colorful than I expected. Bell and Serkis are solid while Pegg and Frost are perhaps a bit too obvious. I liked Craig as the villain as he had something about him as a character which was added to by the voice-work, but mostly this seemed to be a film about movement and as a result the performances never seemed particularly important.
Tintin got a bit of a bad reception but it is a perfectly fine family film with some great set-pieces and plenty of movement. It is weaker when it comes to suspense, tension, plotting and characters and it is hard not to see those having an impact, but generally it is enjoyable for what it is.