The Adventures of Tintin Review

Last year Steven Spielberg brought back this much-loved comic-book detective, and although the outcome is fun on the whole, it's definitely a mixed bag.

The story of "The Secret of the Unicorn" goes a little like this. Tintin comes across a model of the famous ship, the Unicorn, which sank a a couple hundred years ago while carrying a huge amount of gold. It is also believed that this ship is the reason that the Haddock family line is cursed. Tintin gets caught up in a deadly quest for treasure and a settling of scores between two rival family lines.

This plot brings with it many fun moments, but overall just seemed a bit weak to me. Many a time I couldn't quite make out why the main villain was bothering to do what he was doing! And I just thought that maybe stronger motives would have made this a better story on the whole, as it seemed a little too far-fetched.

But that's not too say it was boring, the story was well paced and kept my attention for the duration. It was helped along by a fantastic cast of voices, although I found Tintin's uber-posh English voice to be slightly annoying sometimes - and I'm English.

But that's just a minor flaw because the voice acting here is brilliant, with Andy Serkis, and Daniel Craig delivering great performances, with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost bringing some appreciated comic relief.



Now, a lot of the hype surrounding Tintin came from the much talked about animation, and I'm happy to say that for the most part it delivers. The animation here is often beautiful and brings the movie alive. Although I did find that the detail drops a bit during close-ups on faces, and there is indeed "Dead Eyes" on a lot of the character's that make them feel a little less human then I would have liked.

In the end, Tintin is a fun, but flawed movie. The potentially great story is let down by it being just a little too far-fetched (even for a Tintin movie), thankfully the great voice acting and (mostly) beautiful animation mean it's still an enjoyable movie - just maybe one that would be better off as a rental.

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