Close, but not quite

Rating: 6/10 (27 June 2020)

The good:
The animation and visual effects are amazing with a breathtaking level of skill in crafting an incredibly detailed, elaborate, colourful and realistic world. Judging this movie on visuals alone would warrant giving this movie a 10, and, similar to Avatar (2009), it seems that some reviewers have done just that.
The voicing and characterisations of Thomson and Thompson and Bianca Castafiore are great, in the appropriate doses and true to the books. The various nods to the books are also welcome. The cuts between Haddock retelling the fight between Sir Francis and Red Rackham were well handled, even if the fight itself was somewhat embellished and over the top.
Another reviewer lamented the lack of a love interest, but I am including that as a positive that one was not introduced into this story for the sake of it. A love interest is NOT a mandatory ingredient for an excellent movie or TV series for that matter, and especially not the contrived variety of love interest that you see far too often in most Hollywood movies.
For the most part, the movie is fun.
The bad:
The movie can't decide whether it wants to be a children's movie or a nostalgic movie for adults. On the one hand, there are guns, swordfights and murders. On the other hand, the humour seems to be mostly targeted at children, for example, where Snowy is used to try to create laughs.
Another issue is that too often the movie gets swept up in long action sequences, which can feel like a rollercoaster at times. But just because I love rollercoasters, does not mean that I want to be on one for 2 hours.
Some reviewers have criticised Tintin's character as being devoid of personality and whilst there is some merit in that, it is consistent with the books. But where there is limited material to draw on, it is even more critical that the personality that does come across is true to the source, and here the movie fails at one key point in the movie by portraying Tintin as a defeatest.
However the real failure in my mind, is the depiction of Haddock. Others have mentioned that the voices of Tintin and Haddock were not what they imagined from the books and whilst I agree, particularly with the comments about Tintin's whiney voice and Haddock's unnecessary Scottish accent, I acknowledge that it would be difficult to please everybody. I expected Haddock to be a lot more stoic and have more grit like one would expect from a man who has spent years at sea. Here he seems just too silly and cartoony, particularly with that giant nose. I don't know if it's the giant nose or the way he moves around but he also appears to be on the plump side in the movie but not in the books.
It would be better if the books were followed more closely, but that can be forgiven with the limited time that the movie had. In particular, finding the treasure was anticlimactic when the whole adventure was based on finding the scrolls. It would have been better to have more of the movie dedicated to searching for the treasure itself as in Red Rackham's Treasure, and Professor Calculus was sadly missing, but both of those aspects may be covered in the sequel.
Finally, the problem with an ultra-realistic and lifelike cartoon is that it makes it harder to suspend disbelief in things that you can normally get away with in a cartoon, for example, Haddock burping into the plane engine to keep it in the air, and the numerous times the parchment is lost and regained by a whisker during the chase scene in Bagghar. I think that it would have been better to simply decide on a cartoon or a regular movie and stick with it instead of trying for a hybrid.