“The Adventures of Tintin” was chosen on a whim by my friends and I just when it seemed a consensus would never be reached. After the opening credits, I realized the film was a collaboration between the seminal American director Steven Spielberg, and "The Lord of the Rings" Peter Jackson. At this point I was like this:
The 2011 animated film is the first animated film for Spielberg, who had actually acquired the rights to Tintin in 1984 when the writer of the comics, Hergé, passed away. Apparently he had stated that he thought that Spielberg (who was famous at the time for directing the Indiana Jones series) was the only director who could ever do it justice. I guess it only took a few decades for him to settle on a script?
Peter Jackson had suggested to do the film using 3D Motion Capture technology (as he did in all of his Lord of the Rings films as well as King Kong) and Spielberg was on board after he saw a screen test with Andy Serkis (Smeagol/Gollum) as Captain Haddock.
3D Motion Capture of two characters by the same actor… crazy.
The film follows two of the original comics’ plots, “The Secret of the Unicorn” and “Red Rackham’s Treasure.” Basically Tintin is some teen detective sort (Indiana Jones for kids?) who happens upon a replica of a ship called the Unicorn. His purchasing of the replica leads him down a mystery where the descendants of two feuding families, the Haddocks and the Rackhams, are trying to find the treasure that went down with the original Sir Francis Haddock’s ship. Adventure and alcoholism abound, but the most impressive part of the movie is probably the animation. It has a sort of “Polar Express” quality to it where the animated characters are almost a little too life-like, but I think it worked this time.
The story is complex, but almost to a point where everything has to fall together by dumb luck for it to work. For example, the clue Tintin needs to find the treasure is hidden in the mast of his replica ship, but when his dog chases a stray cat around his flat and breaks the replica, the clue falls underneath his desk. Then when the bad guys come to steal the replica, they don’t get the clue that would have led them to treasure. Everything seems almost too perfect, and it’s boring to follow when you know the answers are going to magically fall into place for the hero.
One thing the film did do well was building in scale. The plot slowly builds from this boy purchasing a replica ship to him riding a building that’s sliding down a street in North Africa trying to chase a hawk that’s holding the clue to the treasure as a dam is pouring water through the city. It’s entertaining during the more action-packed scenes, even when the unrealistic mystery-solving falls a little flat.
One thing that surprised me immensely is that this film wasn’t nominated for Best Animated Picture. The reviews were generally favorable, plus Jackson and Spielberg have 6 Oscars between them. Instead, dumb movies like “Puss in Boots” and “Kung Fu Panda 2” got nominated, with “Rango” (deservingly) winning the title. I don’t think I’ll ever understand the Academy.
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