Visually stunning, story wise boring.

Rating: 4/10 (28 October 2011)

When going to film school, there was one mistake that I saw a lot of the beginning directors, cameramen, editors and the like make. They were all so focused on the technique behind the film, that they forgot to focus on story and the characters. Watching Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn made me feel like I was in film school again.
From the first shot on, walking into the world of Tintin feels amazing, you see that everything was treated with the greatest care and eye for detail, and even though they still can't quite seem to get eyes right, the whole movie looks absolutely amazing. Strangely enough, you don't get the time to enjoy the beauty of it all, because right after the initial scene you're taken into a roller-coaster ride. It's there where this movie is starting to show it's flaws. There's very little breathing time left for the movie, and because of this, you never really get to feel or care for the characters. They never become lovable, they don't get their moment to shine and they're never genuinely funny.
Watching the whole spectacle, one begins to wonder if Spielberg purposely chose to abandon all basic storytelling rules and just go with it, or if he was distracted the whole technique of motion capture while making it. At least, to me, it feels that way.
As a result of this, the movie falls a bit flat. You have a great introduction sequence, but after this you're sucked into one two hour action sequence which is barely followable because of all the different layers of action going on on screen. Steady camera shots have been replaced by a constantly moving roller-coaster cam, which gives beautiful lenghty shots, but gives so much information that it's barely followable en sometimes even stomach turning.
Another part where the technique doesn't compliment in the storytelling is with the sometimes slapstick humor. Because the characters look so real, except for some facial features, as a viewer, you can't really accept some of the things that happen to them. If a piano falls on a cartoon character, you think it's funny because you accept that he'll just come out of it unharmed except for the fact that the piano keys are (completely playable) sticking out of his mouth. If that same thing happens to a human, we know that he would have broken every bone in his body and, if still alive, would have to be driven to the intensive care immediately. These kind of things feel illogical in the movie and take the viewer away from the viewing experience.
Storywise they took the easy way out. The situations feel forced and uneasy, like they wanted to put as many locations in the film as they could, and the plot, told by action instead of dialogue, is rather laughable. I don't like to compare the source material to the movie in a review, but the way they translated and hollywoodised the story feels out of place and never genuine. This feeling even goes as far as the soundtrack, because even the music by the brilliant John Williams seems flat, uninspired and never truly memorable. We never hear any of the compositions that Williams excels at, the recognizable orchestrated themes introducing plot elements or characters, telling a story of their own. But to be honest, these elements never really get enough screen time to have their own theme.
In a nutshell, it feels like the movie was focused on technique, and while it looks truly beautiful, it lacks in all the other departments. And in a world in which computer graphics get prettier every day, this movie, in a couple of years, will be forgotten with the rest of the for-their-time beautiful, but lacking story wise, computer animated films.