Not anywhere near as good as the books, but quite entertaining nonetheless

Rating: 7/10 (6 January 2012)

I love the Tintin comics and have done so since I was in Primary School. I remember that I would scour the shelves in the fiction section of the library looking for books that I have not read, and attempting to get my hands on those that I have not read. To date I believe that the only comic I have not read would be 'Tintin in the Land of the Soviets' though I also believe that I may not have read 'Tintin in the Congo' as the only version I ever remember was one in German, and my research has revealed that both were not translated into English until after Herge's death.
Tintin is a Belgium reporter who goes on quite a few wonderful adventures throughout his career. While the first couple of comics involved him simply as a reporter traveling to foreign lands, since the Cigars of the Pharaohs, he evolved into an independent crime fighter, and slowly grew a number of allies around himself. The Thompson Twins (two bumbling detectives labeled the greatest detectives in the world), Captain Haddock, an alcoholic retired sea captain, and Professor Cuthbert Calculus, a rather eccentric scientist who is a little hard of hearing in one ear. The Thompson Twins and Captain Haddock appear in the movie, but the books upon which the movie is based appear before Calculus is introduced into the series, so as is understandable, does not make an appearance. Obviously, there is his loyal Terrier Snowy.
This movie is based on two of the books, Secret of the Unicorn and Crab with the Golden Claws. While at first I thought that it was only Secret of the Unicorn, after Tintin was kidnapped and woke up on a ship, it became clear that the plot had moved away from the original book and had incorporated a second one. After the film, I sat down and watched both of them from the cartoon series, and of course my suspicions were confirmed. However, it does not faithfully stick with those two books. In the book Sacarin is a minor character what appears a couple of times, however in the film he turns out not only to be the villain, but is also the descendant of the Haddock family's arch-enemy Red Rackham. This never appears in the book nor is the Haddock family curse.
The difficulty with making the film would be trying to find out which would be the best book to turn into the film, considering that there are (I believe) over twenty of them. To somebody new to Tintin, it would be very difficult to make one of the later books into a film since there is a lot of backstory involved, and while my favourite would be Cigars of the Pharoahs, it appears that they wanted to have Haddock make a major appearance in the film, which does not happen in that particular book.
I could go on for a while picking it to pieces, but I really do not want to do that because I did enjoy the film. They did capture the adventurous nature of the Tintin books quite well, though I could see a lot of Spielberg's influence in it (which is not surprising because he is the director). While I never consider Spielberg films to be really high on my list (I will never get the six hours back that I spent watching Close Encounters – twice) he does make entertaining adventure films, as the three Indiana Jones movies testify (not counting the fourth, which I suspect not many people do) and The Adventures of Tintin does not disappoint. However, being the purist that I am, I always find myself wanting to go back to the books themselves, as they are so much more entertaining (particularly with Snowy's dry comments).