A good fun film

Rating: 8/10 (2 April 2012)

This is one INCREDIBLE looking film. I'm sure you may have read that somewhere before my previous sentence, so had I and I was still amazed by it. The animation, facial expressions, eyes, eyebrows, Snowy, all of them look as real as animation could get, fantastic stuff. Several scenes are crammed with so much beauty on the screen that it really is awesome.
Watching this film reminded me of the book and the animated show. In my eyes that makes the film a success, the characters of Tintin (and Snowy), Captain Haddock, Thomson and Thompson are almost identical to my memories from childhood, a joy to watch. Several people have commented on the accents not being European but when I imagined the characters talking whilst reading the stories, they were talking in English accents.
Speaking of voice actors, every cast member (Jamie Bell, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Andy Serkis) is on form, delivering joy and menace appropriately. Jamie Bell in particular gives his Tintin the sense of youthful adventure that I imagined he would do.
The story is a combination of several of the Tintin books and whilst the pacing is uneven at times, the story is a nice mix of adventure and danger. The first third of the film is fantastic, the initial set-up, introduction to characters and the plot as a whole are very well done, add to this a fantastic opening title sequence (think Catch Me If You Can) and it draws you right in. Whilst the rest of the film doesn't live up to these inspired first minutes, it certainly holds its own and has that kind of Spielberg magic where it just has a slightly magical feel to it.
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