Great Snakes!
In the opening scene of The Adventures of Tintin, the title character is having a caricature portrait painted by a street artist. The painter is surrounded by many other paintings that he has for sale. These are actually the characters featured in various Tintin books and as shown in the inside covers of every Tintin book. The street artist himself was actually styled to look like Georges Prosper Remi, aka Hergé, the author of the original books.
A young journalist named Tintin (Jamie Bell) has just purchased a highly detailed model ship named The Unicorn. Soon, a mysterious man named Ivanovich Sakharine (Daniel Craig) eagerly tries to purchase the ship from Tintin for more than its actual value. When the boy will not sell his new find, Mr. Sakharine zealously resorts to extreme measures. He murders the FBI operative following him and kidnaps Tintin and his loyal dog, Snowy. Now on a cargo ship bound for Morocco, Tintin must escape the mutinous crew assisted only by the drunkard Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis). The captain tells the young journalist of his ancestor Sir Francis Haddock who was forced to scuttle the real Unicorn after being attacked by the privateer forebear of Sakharine. Luckily, he managed to save part of his treasure and leave behind clues written on small scrolls hidden in the model ships. Now that both Sakharine and Tintin are in possession of scrolls only one is left. This one is owned by the Sheik of Bagghar who keeps it under heavy security. Now this boy hero, his dog and the captain must get the third scroll and fulfill Sir Francis Haddock’s prophecy that “only a true Haddock will know the secret of The Unicorn.”
This year Tintin’s many adventures have taken him as far as Hollywood! Greats of the cinema Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have teamed up to bring everyone’s favorite ginger haired journalist and part-time adventurer to the big screen. The Adventures of Tintin is only the first of two films that will span three different books including The Secret of the Unicorn, Red Rackham’s Treasure and The Crab with the Golden Claws. This whimsical whirlwind adventure that will take Tintin across tumultuous seas and bone-dry deserts is fun from beginning to end. The pace rarely ever slows to a sprint which enhances Spielberg’s several Raiders of the Lost Ark style chase scenes. Motion caption technology is used to give Hergé’s simplistic cartoon characters all the minute imperfections that any real person would have. These details are so immersive that it is easy forget the story and just concentrate on the beautiful art. In the first act, some moviegoers maybe rather confused about who Tintin really is. Spielberg never really provides a fully developed backstory for the world traveled boy adventurer. However, this may have been intended. Hergé gave Tintin very little background so that his readers would have an easier time relating to the book’s namesake. Costarring in this film were Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Cary Elwes, and Toby Jones.
You can see that Spielberg has put his love of the original books into this film. That same joy is contagious. It is always nice when you can leave a theater smiling. If all other 3-D adventure family films would live up to the standard set by ambitious sleuths like Hugo and Tintin, taking the kids to the theatre would be much more entertaining.
