Simple adventure that gets everything right

Rating: 9/10 (27 March 2012)

When I first saw the ads for this film my heart sank. It's been years of watching every beloved story from my childhood get butchered by Hollywood. Now Tintin? Damn! I didn't like the character design--why didn't they just reproduce Herge's characters in conventional animation? I felt sure they were going to make Tintin into some gloomy anti-hero with a tragic back story like the pouting brat in the last Indiana Jones movie--ugh!
Then I read a New Yorker review--a very negative review--complaining that the movie was non-stop action. "What's Tintin's motivation? What's his background? What does he want?" the review asked. And I thought "Maybe Spielberg really did capture the naive spirit of Tintin."
Did he ever. The Tintin stories are globe-trotting adventure at its innocent best, and so is this movie. No, Tintin doesn't suffer from angst and self-doubt--he's Action Boy! What's his motivation? An unquenchable thirst for adventure, that's what.
It takes a few minutes to get used to the character design, but you soon realize it's perfect, nothing like the creepy waxworks of Polar Express. I realized that two hours of looking at Herge's simple line work and flat colors would have been tedious. And the more naturalistic figures help to make the adventure thrilling.
The movie gets all the little things right, too. Captain Haddock's drinking is handled well, played for laughs but with a serious side. The secondary characters are great, especially the thuggish Allen. Even the Thompson twins, who got kind of annoying in the comics, have the right weight.
There are some sly references to other Peter Jackson and Spielberg films, good voice work all around, and even a cameo appearance by Herge himself. Snowy is just perfect--you feel he could have stolen the show, but Spielberg, who usually dumps on cuteness by the truckload, restrains himself admirably. For creative use of animation, this movie ranks with Toy Story or The Incredibles.
I wouldn't want every adventure movie to be this simple, but I'm glad this one came out just as it did. If you can't have fun watching Tintin, you don't know what fun is.