Wonderful, cutting edge motion-capture animation, but for me a 'so-so' film.

Rating: Null/10 (8 May 2012)

This movie, 'Tintin', of course got a lot of advanced publicity and true to its producers and directors is a smashing success. It is hard to say how it could have been improved. It certainly reminds the viewer of scenes from 'Raiders' and young Tintin certainly is an Indiana Jones type of action hero.
But I watched it with a general low level of interest. I can suspend by disbelief when I am viewing real actors playing roles. Especially when the action includes things that 'seem' possible. However viewing animated characters do things which seems impossible, for me, is akin to watching old Roadrunner and Wylie Coyote cartoons.
The plot is fine, young Tintin is wandering through a flea market and buys an old model ship, which his cat and dog fight in his apartment breaks off the mast. Inside the mast he finds a metal tube with something written on a piece of parchment. Soon his apartment is robbed and the model stolen. He eventually learns that three models were built and each had a message, when put with the other three may give directions to a great hidden pirate treasure.
So this takes Tintin and old sea captain Haddock on a harrowing journey all over the world, repeatedly narrowly escaping capture and/or death. And eventually to the treasure.
Jamie Bell is super, voicing Tintin. As well as Andy Serkis voicing Captain Haddock. Plus the villain is voiced by Daniel Craig. Plus a bunch of other established actors.
There is an interesting 8-minute DVD extra on how the Tintin movie came to be, including a clip from something Peter Jackson put together, with his own face for Haddock. And, in fact in the movie itself Haddock looks mostly like Peter Jackson.
Tintin's face and expressions looked very familiar to me and very much like a red-headed version of Nathan Corddry who plays Adam on the TV series 'Harry's Law' starring Kathy Bates. It had me wondering if they used him as a model for the animated Tintin.
SPOILERS: After Tintin and Haddock managed to get all three parchment notes, superimposing them and looking at the characters through light formed geographic coordinates, and when they followed them to an old mansion found it was Haddocks's and a hidden basement contained treasure.