Disappointing

Rating: 5/10 (25 December 2011)

A huge disappointment by two genuinely great directors specialized in popular entertainment, like Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. The secret of The Unicorn was the first Tintin book I read (my parents give it to me as a present when I was 9 years old, more than thirty years ago). It is also one of my favorite Tintin books. This might be why I felt so disappointed by this. Absent from the movie is all the subtlety in the book. What is present here is a very heavy handed, video-game like approach.
In theory, this could have been a match made in heaven, as previous works by Spielberg especially (like the Indiana Jones franchise) have a strong resemblance to Tintin, in terms of plot and in terms of the epoch (the thirties and the forties were the epoch were both Tintin and Indiana have their best outings). In practice, the film doesn't work. Let's try to analyze why.
Let's first concede that Tintin is difficult to bring into the screen (previous adaptations, both animated and live-action, have failed). I think one of the reasons is that Tintin lives in a very stylized world, and this becomes quite obvious when one transplants Tintin from a drawing in a paper to a photographic medium (even in the form of computer animation).
The charming plot of the book (Tintin finds by accident a manuscript hidden inside a model ship called the Unicorn that might be a clue to a hidden treasure, and soon sees himself chased by other people interested in that treasure), has some minor changes, but those changes are generally for the worst. For instance, the slimy Bird brothers in the book were better villains than Ivan Sakharine in the film, who was not one of the bad guys in the original book. Mixed up with the plot of the Unicorn (and in a not very convincing manner), appear elements of other Tintin books, especially The Crab with the Golden Claws, another favorite of mine.
Lastly, the animation is not completely convincing: the problem of the unrealistic eyes (the so called uncanny valley, which many have pointed already in The Polar Express, and which evidently hasn't been solved) makes for a Tintin that is slightly creepy. By the way, the photography is some scenes is too dark and murky, when the Tintin books are famous for the use of bright colors and little contrast (the famous clear line style).