The Adventures of Tintin Review

The next film on my viewing list was The Adventures of Tintin. This is a film I really didn’t have much interest in as I knew nothing of the history of the character (it was a hugely popular European comic book during much of the 20th century).

Much to my complete surprise the film grabbed hold of me from the very first moments. Its look demands attention and should blow away most anyone that sees it. I’ve simply never seen animation look this good. While we saw it in 3D the 3D elements weren’t all that necessary or impressive so the impact was surely the same in the standard version. Every inanimate object looked entirely real. The main characters didn’t and, in fact, suffered from the same odd disconnect as other efforts where the humans looked almost real but not quite. However, I then realized that this seemed to be mainly limited to only the core characters. Other people walking around looked entirely true-to-life as they didn’t need to convey the comic-like exaggerations of the main characters.

Some of the special effects were also noteworthy as they were among the very best I’ve seen in either an animated or live action movie. By the end of the film I realized that this effort had completely made the case that Hollywood, via animation, is now able to effectively digitize and present any story they want without animation creating a problem with realism. There’s no doubt in my mind that within the next few years we’re going to see something entirely different as a result of the evolution of the industry. Perhaps now it’s time to see a new Humphrey Bogart film or Harrison Ford acting alongside a young Katharine Hepburn.

That’s for a future movie to ponder. For now the issue is this film and, sadly, there’s nothing else of any import to convey. This one ran 1 hour 47 minutes but felt easily much longer than War Horse. The story was uninteresting and downright plodding in several places. There are some laughs here and there but nothing sustainable. There are also a few times where you’re not entirely sure what’s going on. By the end we had one member of our group that fell asleep half-way through and another that nearly did so.

Suffice to say that I didn’t think it could be possible to see two new Spielberg films in a single weekend and have the end result be that both of them were a bores. Now I’ve seen everything—and maybe that’s the problem. However, I think it’s not me but Spielberg. His last great movie was five years ago now and I wonder if perhaps he’s simply running out of great ideas. I hope not.