The Adventures of Tintin (2011) Review

I am sad. Really, really sad. Sad as in "Today, my childhood memories got shat on"-sad. "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn" was quite bad. Not abysmally "Battlefield Earth"-meets-"Spiceworld"-bad but still, really really bad and, more importantly, very disappointing.

I grew up loving the movies of Steven Spielberg. "Jurassic Park", the original "Indiana Jones" flicks, "Hook", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", I loved them all. He couldn't do any wrong, my little kid brain even loved the at best mediocre "The Lost World: Jurassic Park". Though from a more mature perspective one has to admit that his track record is rather bumpy, for every "Schindler's List" there is a crappy "Always", for every "E.T." there is a terrible "The Terminal". So is his new "Tintin" movie one of his better ones? In my humble opinion: NO!

First the biggest problem of all: Why the motion capture? While it it surely quite convincing to see non-organic things animated in this way, I can't help but be more than distracted by these motion-captured creatures with their cold dead eyes. Why didn't they completely animate it? Or make it live-action? Instead we get a look that was already appalling in Robert Zemeckis' "The Polar Express" and "A Christmas Carol".

Second, even if the animation wouldn't be so out of place, how do they expect us to go with the film if we are treated with possibly the blandest main character in 2011? This Tintin is a character with basically no personality, all we know is that he is a reporter and has a dog named Snowie. He is so uninteresting I was starting to root for the bad guy, played by Daniel Craig, to kick his ass. Jamie Bell is a good actor but he wasn't given anything by the script to make something out of his interpretation of Tintin.

Third, Captain Haddock played by Andy Serkis. Serkis is also a great actor, with outstanding performances as Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and as Caesar in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes". Haddock on the other hand, while sporadically funny and entertaining, is more of an annoyance and, although many critics were raving about his portrayal, he didn't do much for me but get on my nerves.

I couldn't even enjoy the action sequences. The movie is full of them, one faster and more over the top than the other but at some point I just got tired of them, especially since I've seen better animated action in video game cut scenes. Again, if they'd made it live-action with actual people and no CGI, it could have been great. Look at Spielberg's own creation; "Raiders of the Lost Ark", all handmade action and it is still exciting to this very day.

Who knows, maybe I just had a bad day when I watched it, a second look might reveal what masterpiece I've missed. But until then, "The Adventures of Tintin" remains one of the biggest blunders of the year.