Further Evidence That Spielberg Has Lost Interest

Rating: 5/10 (24 April 2012)

I tend to have a fairly good method for judging whether or not I think a film is worthy of praise or guilty of some cinematic flaw. I base my method on whether or not I'd watch it again. Films I love, I can watch more than once, sometimes many times. In the case of The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, I won't be watching it again.
Not that this is necessarily a bad film. The voice-acting is of a decent standard (the strangely under-employed Serkis predictably stealing the show); the animation is technically advanced and at points breath-taking. The story is a hybrid of two or three Tintin books and there are a variety of nods, winks and tips of the hat in the direction of hardcore fans, which I suspect hardcore fans will either love or hate.
But there are underlying problems here which seem to be the trademark of modern Spielberg efforts. Long gone are the days of ET and Close Encounters. The shine is gone from Spielberg's talent and while the remaining vestiges of, admittedly, higher than average ability continue to glimmer from time to time, there's a veneer of tarnished weariness about this once epic director. You can't help wondering if Spielberg has lost his love for movie-making and is, at this point in his life, merely going through the motions.
Less subtle are the glaring problems with this movie, beginning with what must be one of the longest and most irritating opening credit sequences I've ever had the misfortune to sit through.
The animated characters are at best unendearing, at worst outright creepy. From Haddock's piggy little eyes to the oddly life-like yet simultaneously corpse-ish features of the peripheral characters, something clearly went wrong at the effects stage. I'm reminded of the failed attempt to inject realism into the cast of The Polar Express, resulting in a variety of horrible computer generated manikins somewhat akin to, but not quite precisely like Tom Hanks if Tom Hanks were to be returned from the dead without his soul.
The heir apparent to Red Rackham is the most disconcerting in terms of inhuman humanisation, being the least cartoonish of the animated cast his obviously unreal features are the most wrenching. His face is beautifully modelled, but only in the same way that a waxwork is beautifully modelled. His expressions never quite come to fruition and it's often hard to tell where his eyes are pointing, giving the impression that this might not be an animation at all but live action featuring bored actors in masks.
Where the animation succeeds in boiling over to nuclear proportions is in the action sequences, from the breath-stealing view of a Moroccan coastal town to the eye-popping gorgeousness of The Unicorn surging through mountainous waves. The battle between Red Rackham's ship and The Unicorn, while ludicrously over-dramatic, will satisfy even the most demanding eye-candy addict.
Unfortunately the emphasis in Tintin was always on exposition, soliloquy, thoughtful puzzle solving and unlikely gun fights in which nobody gets hurt or bleeds. This all lent itself uncommonly well to Herge's comic book format; neat and precise as the lines of the figures he drew and the frames within which their adventures unfolded. But on the big screen it makes for a long-winded and awkward experience. And rather than embellish the moments of calm, the sudden and explosive action sequences work only to throw the intelligent aspects into stark relief.
I wanted to love this movie. But I've suspected for a while now that Spielberg is in some kind of artistic decline and did not, for this very reason, raise my hopes particularly high. So I didn't love it, though it was somewhat entertaining.