Enjoyable all ages adventure

Rating: Null/10 (28 October 2011)

The unusually named intrepid boy reporter Tin Tin buys a model sailing ship at a street market: this proves to unlock a mystery involving murder, adventure, and treasure.
Herge's Tin Tin comics stand alone: Herge's beautiful clean draughtsmanship perfectly complements stories which blend adventure, action, mystery, and comedy. In many respects it is surprising that they have not been adapted for the big screen before now (there is a decent series of drawn animation adaptations going back several decades). I imagine that the main problem with a big screen adaptation was how to go about it.
I guess that there may have been two main problems with a live action adaptation. One is the fact that the set pieces would not have been easy to achieve with live action. The other would be that people are often unhappy with the casting choices because they may not resemble their hand drawn equivalents.
CGI would appear to offer the ideal solution to these problems, and Tin Tin is Spielberg's first animated feature. It looks splendidly realistic with the sole exception of the characters. Many of the featured characters look facially like CGI modelled cartoon characters (which, of course, they are), while others look realistic, and this divergence is somewhat disconcerting. Tin Tin, apart from his trademark quiff, looks oddly realistic rasher than like his cartoon self and this, too, is a little disconcerting. However, many members of the audience are not going to be familiar with the originals, so I suspect that the decision to model like this is a good one.
Because apart from that, everything else here works well. The story powers along wonderfully - if anything, a little too well, because there is scarcely time to draw breath. The animation is excellent, sometimes breathtaking, and the 3D works well. John Williams' score is first rate, the motion capture performances are all fine, and the voice work is good (although I felt Daniel Craig's voice, though unmistakable, did not suit his character). There is a point of view that Tin Tin himself is somewhat devoid of character. While there is some justification to this, a) Jamie Bell's voice characterisation is excellent, b) Tin Tin has always been something of a blank slate because c) he is the tabula rasa on which a young audience writes their own character identification.
This movie is, above everything else, great fun.