THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Hergé (Comic Book Series)
Starring: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Toby Jones
Stateside, Hergé’s (Georges Prosper Remi) singular, singularly named comic-strip hero, Tintin, isn’t particularly well known, or if he’s known, particularly well-liked. A longtime fan of Hergé’s adventure-seeking, boy-reporter, Steven Spielberg has spent the better part of three decades attempting to bring Tintin to the big screen. That he finally succeeded, not with a live-action feature film, but with a 3D animated one, deserves some modicum of respect, if not praise. Seeing Tintin on the big screen, however, it becomes clear why Spielberg fell in love with the character: He’s a proto-Indiana Jones for the PG set (i.e., family-oriented moviegoers) and, to be accurate, an influence on Indiana Jones’ creator, George Lucas.
Spielberg and screenwriters Steven Moffat (SHERLOCK, DOCTOR WHO), Edgar Wright (SCOTT PILGRIM, HOT FUZZ, SHAUN OF THE DEAD), and Joe Cornish (ATTACK THE BLOCK), waste little (actually no) time in sending Tintin (voiced and mo-capped by Jamie Bell) on his latest adventure. Accompanied by his dog, best friend, and sidekick, Snowy, one afternoon, Tintin comes across a model ship. He purchases the ship with minimal haggling, but within seconds two men, Barnaby (Joe Starr) and Ivanovich Sakharine (Daniel Craig), approach Tintin. Each man wants to buy the model ship from Tintin. Interest suddenly piqued, Tintin refuses both offers. Tintin doesn’t get a chance to inspect the ship before Snowy, chasing a stray cat, dislodges the ship from its precarious spot atop a mantel. Tintin, however, doesn’t notice a metal cylinder that rolls under the furniture. Additional encounters with the two men, however, suggest that Tintin has stumbled in a major mystery with life-or-death implications.
The cylinder contains a scroll and the scroll contains a word puzzle, a word puzzle that apparently reveals the location of a 17th-century man-o-war, the “Unicorn,” and a “secret cargo” of some kind. The other two parts of the word puzzle, however, have been hidden in two other replicas of the Unicorn. Sakharine already has one, leaving one scroll unaccounted for. Tintin’s search eventually leads to a merchant ship and Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), the last surviving heir of Sir Francis Haddock, the captain of the Unicorn and the man behind the mystery of the scrolls. With Sakharine on their trail, Tintin, Haddock, and, of course, Snowy, make their way to a Moroccan port city where they hope to find the third model ship and unlock the “secret of the Unicorn” (the subtitle for THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN everywhere except stateside).
In a film where plot is everything and character secondary (or tertiary), it’s not surprising that Tintin receives minimal characterization and doesn’t actually change during the course of his adventures. When we meet Tintin, he’s excited for his next adventure, whatever it may be. When we leave Tintin, he’s excited for his next adventure (though there’s little suspense as to what that adventure will be. Only Haddock has a recognizable character arc of any kind. Haddock, an alcoholic hiding the pain and anguish of a lifetime of failures, including a marked inability to live up to his illustrious ancestor, gets the obligatory chance at redemption, not to mention sobriety, by joining the indefatigable Tintin on his adventure (which is really Haddock’s). The villains are nothing less or more than villains, motivated by greed and old grudges. And the secret, when revealed, isn’t particularly surprising (no Grail, Ark, or karma-powered gemstones here).
With the hunt for the scrolls always at the forefront, THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN is never short on energy or momentum. Spielberg keeps the tone light throughout via character-based humor, including a running subplot involving similarly named, nearly identical police inspectors Thompson (Simon Pegg) and Thomson (Nick Frost), a bright color palette, and periodic set pieces, each one as, if not more, gravity-defying than the last. 3D animation gives Spielberg a level of freedom he seems to relish with every shot and set piece. Ceaseless camera movements, often, but not always, to emphasize depth, are the norm, as are stunts that bear little, if any, relation to the real world. Combined with breakneck plotting and a straightforward story (perhaps too straightforward for older children and adults), THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN is nothing if not a near-perfect family film.
THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN falls short of perfection for several reasons. Spielberg’s decision to use motion-capture for TINTIN, while admirable on one level (i.e., adopting a style similar to Hergé’s comic strip), it still runs into the “uncanny valley” problem first evident seven years ago with Roger Zemeckis’ [i]The Polar Express[/i]. Technological progress has ameliorated, but not eliminated the “dead-eye” problem. More egregiously, TINTIN seems to adopt out-of-date biases and prejudices about the Middle East and Middle Easterners (e.g., long, hawk-like noses). Unsurprisingly, the villain shares physical traits with the Middle Eastern characters. Last, in a film where female characters are practically nonexistent, the one character who could be described as important or prominent looks like a man, an unattractive man, in drag.
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