Chief nemesis is the malevolent Sakharine ( Daniel Craig), with whom Haddock has, as they say, a history. Along for the ride – which entails airplanes, frigates, and motorcyles – is the boozy sea captain Haddock ( Andy Serkis). With his quiff of orangey hair and his boy-wonder doggedness, Tintin ( Jamie Bell) and his trusty terrier Snowy circle the globe in pursuit of buried treasure. The exploits are based on three classic Tintin books by the Belgian comic-book artist Hergé (the pseudonym for journalist and illustrator Georges Remi) – “The Crab With the Golden Claws,” “The Secret of the Unicorn,” and “Red Rackham’s Treasure.” Those titles alone provide a taste of the film’s flavor. “Tintin” is a mélange of second-tier derring-do out of “ Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Spielberg has transferred his mania for graphic storytelling into a new realm, but essentially we’re watching a live-action variation on some pretty old stuff. This is not, as it turns out, quite enough of an achievement for me. The main achievement of “Tintin” is that at least the cartoon people and pets come across as characters and not hollow, humanoid entities. In the past, this technique, as demonstrated in movies like Robert Zemeckis’s “The Polar Express” and “ Beowulf,” came across as machine-tooled – soulless.
#The adventures of tintin review movie#
If, like me, you find the movie technique known as motion capture creepy, you might be put off going to see Steven Spielberg’s 3-D “ The Adventures of Tintin.” Motion capture is a sort of halfway house between live-action and animation, with real actors, wired with reflectors and filmed by multiple digital cameras, employed as stand-ins for characters who are then animated against preset backgrounds.