The Adventures of Tintin
26th October 2011. Location: Cinema
Premise: A nosey teenager, worryingly adept with firearms, finds himself in the company of an alcoholic sailor, stranded in Morocco with no passport...
Wow. No, really. Wow.
Given that I was never really a fan of Tintin, finding it a little too old fashioned for my tastes, I wasn't expecting this to really connect with me. I was prepared to be visually impressed, for sure, but the cast and crew have reached deep into the bag and pulled out a first-class action adventure movie, here.
Now if you're a fan of Tintin already, you'll be rolling your eyes and mouthing told you so. But this movie brings something new to the franchise for me; a sense of movement which the comics never really captured (again, for me). It's very easy to forget that the highly stylised characters you're watching are CGI, even though they could only be exactly that. The camerawork, script and pacing all suggest a live-action film, and the excellent voice-work backs this up. There are one or two moments where the animation becomes a little jerky and lifeless, but even then it's only reduced to the level of very, very good CGI.
With Spielberg directing and John Williams scoring, Tintin reminded me of the Indiana Jones series regularly, particularly in the Moroccan locations, and it's a credit to Moffat, Wright and Cornish that their writing is on par with those films.
After seeing one of the Thompson Twins fall down the stairs in the trailer, I was worried about the level of slapstick we'd be getting. Luckily, this is kept to a minimum (read: largely the scenes with the Thompson Twins in), as the rest of the spills are action-based. There is a lot of humour in the film, courtesy of Andy Serkis' Captain Haddock and Snowy the dog, but it's never overbearing and never overdone.
We saw this is 2D, but I'll be watching it again in 3D. The medium works best in animation anyway, and if the rest of the visuals are anything to go by, it should be stunning.
Whether you're a fan of the books or not, I can't recommend this film highly enough. A classic adventure, and a thing of great beauty.
...still got no real desire to return to the books, mind.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
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