Tintin out

Rating: 6/10 (16 March 2015)

As a young teenager I avidly borrowed as many of the Tintin comic books from my library as I possibly could and indeed many years later as an adult, bought them all to have them permanently. I was therefore more than curious to see what Steven Spielberg would do with the character, with this, the first big-time movie feature of the young Belgian reporter and his faithful dog Snowy.
I really appreciated the title sequence with the lettering in the original style of the books but must admit that afterwards I found it difficult to completely accept the motion-capture technique employed. I guess it's a similar criticism which was levelled at say "The Polar Express", where the characters depicted are more human than cartoon, putting at odds somewhat the toon-town type various stunts and action sequences which occur to almost-human looking characters.
I also felt that there just too many of these big set-pieces which gave me battle-fatigue in the end. There's no shortage of ingenuity or spectacle in some of these scenes but coming in rapid succession as they do, they got a bit too commonplace in my view. Characterisation not unnaturally is shallow and distinctly one-dimensional while the story is relentlessly episodic. When Tintin and / or Captain Haddock miraculously escapes death for the umpteenth time, it takes a little of the suspense away for what comes next.
Of course it's difficult to comment on the acting given it's all done in the animation and to be honest I barely noticed the big-name voice actors employed. I wasn't impressed by the super-confident reference at the end to a sequel which four years after first release still noticeably hasn't seen the light of day.
Don't get me wrong, quite a lot of the movie I did like and there were some spectacular directorial flourishes to enjoy, none more than when a handshake between Tintin and the Captain dissolves into a landscape. Still, I found it on the whole a bit too loud and crash-bang-wallop for my tastes, so that the characters were almost overpowered by the action raging around them.
Would Herge have approved? I'm not so sure, this looks a wee bit like one of those vanity projects big-name directors can indulge themselves in without completely taking their audience along with them.