Surpassing the Uncanny Valley (?)

Rating: 9/10 (6 November 2011)

I saw "The Adventures of Tintin" this weekend and was gladly surprised how well this movie works. As a kid I read almost all Tintin Stories and watched the cartoons. I loved the exciting adventures that brought Tintin and his fellows all over the globe.
Now this Spielberg directed flick offers a great interpretation of Hergé's comicbook. It's almost like watching an Indiana Jones Movie. And I have to say that "Tintin" contains the elements I missed in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull". It has great memorable characters (ex. the constantly drunk Haddock), wonderful humour and a stupendous spectacular motorcycle chase through the city of bagghar. I would love to see Spielberg and Peter Jackson collaborating for an Indy Movie...
Now what really stood out was the CGI, made by Weta Digital, which is probably the best company in offering computer animated lifelike characters. "Tintin" offers, whitout doubt, the best Character CGI since Camerons Avatar. During the first 5 minutes of the film my jaw almost dropped when I saw how detailed and realistic the characters appeared on screen. You can see every single hair on Tintin's forehead moving in the wind. The eyes don't seem dead (which is a major problem in character animation), they seem very realistic. Some scenes are animated so well, that they almost look like live action footage.
"Tintin" is a fantastic movie, the story is very simple, but it has wit, spectacular action and top notch CGI which is expected to win an Oscar (something would be wrong if it wouldn't).