A pleasant surprise

Rating: 9/10 (6 January 2012)

When I was a kid, I used to watch the "The Adventures of Tintin" animated series from 1991: That series was my first contact with the all the stories and characters created by Hergé. Even when I never became a "Tintin" fan (At least, not a die-hard fan) I always found that series to be funny and interesting, being a faithful adaptation of the original books.
When this movie was announced, I had some doubts about it, because I heard that it was going to be made using motion-capture animation. While that visual technique works very well for video-games, it didn't have very good results in animated films (Just like in the last three movies made by Robert Zemeckis, and in the atrocious film "Mars Needs Moms")
Fortunately, "Tintin" ended being a much better movie than I was expecting: Not only the quality of the animation is vastly superior to feature films such as "Beowulf" of "The Polar Express", having an incredible level of realism (Despite the fact that there is still something a bit awkward about the movements and expression of the characters.) But the best thing about this film is that it respects the true essence of the source material, being an exciting adventure flick from beginning to end. Just like the original Hergé comics, or the animated series from 1991. The action scenes were excellent, having all the Steven Spielberg "touch" in all of them, being incredibly faithful to the books in which this film is based.
"The Adventures of Tintin", along with "Rango" and "Kung Fu Panda 2" is one of the best movies from the year 2011, and for me, it was one of the most enjoyable flicks that I have the chance to see in the last year. Even when I don't like motion-capture animation, I found this movie to quite entertaining and enjoyable. I highly recommend it for the whole family.