Fantastic!

Rating: 9/10 (17 January 2012)

This is probably Spielberg's best adventure film since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and he demonstrates how awesome motion capture animated films can be. He takes to the medium like a fish to water, and the whole thing is just an awesome spectacle. It almost seems like the film is populated with human actors wearing cartoon costumes. Its odd, but not at all offputting. The performances are uniformly good, but once again we have a motion capture performance by Andy Serkis (here playing Captain Haddock) which is just outstanding. Not only the physical acting, but the voice acting, which he also performed, are absolutely wonderful. Jamie Bell plays Tintin. The character's an institution in Europe, but pretty unknown in the United States (thankfully I used to watch the British animated series, which aired on HBO in the early '90s - I vividly remember the subplot about the pickpocket that appears here from that show). Perhaps people will catch up to Tintin and be there more for the two sequels (which will be directed by Peter Jackson, who consulted with Spielberg, who has owned the movie rights since the '80s, on this one).