THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: THE SECRET OF THE UNICORN

Into the Uncanny Valley

Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Daniel Craig

The Belgian boy reporter who captured the imagination of millions - Americans excepted, naturally - leaps onto the big screen, guided by the hands of not only superdirector Steven Spielberg, but also producer - and lifelong fan - Peter Jackson. So how does he fare?

Surprisingly well. For all its use of cutting-edge filmmaking technology, motion-capture CGI, and eye-popping 3D, this is an old-fashioned, two-fisted adventure tale, and comparisons to the Indiana Jones films are not unwarranted.

The script - cobblead together by the truly impressive team of Steven (Doctor Who) Moffatt, Edgar (Shaun of the Dead) Wright, and Joe (Attack the Block) Cornish, draws on a number of Herge’s Tintin albums to create a rough origin story: Tintin’s (Jamie Bell) pursuit of a mysterious model ship, The Unicorn, leads him to hook up with the irascible and alcoholic Captain Haddock (mocap veteran Andy Serkis) for the first time, and leads them into a globetrotting race against evil Russian Ivan Sakharine (Daniel Craig) for a fabulous treasure.

The animation is top notch, taking Herge’s simple, elegant art style and fleshing it out enough for a big screen outing without sacrificing any of its charm. There are a few moments of dissonance, particularly early on - the uncanny valley can be a harsh and unforgiving place - but the film’s boisterous spirit and breakneck sense of fun soon pushes that aside and you find yourself caught up in the dizzying adventure of it all.

The CGI format also enables Spielberg to stretch himself creatively to an extent that he hasn’t in years, staging shots and entire sequences that would be simply impossible with a physical camera. There’s a pirate ship battle bolder and more imaginative than anything found in the Pirates Of The Caribbean series, and a chase through the fictional Moroccan port of Bagghar that is truly jaw-dropping in its scope, and becomes all the more so when you realise that the entire sequence has been rendered without a single edit - it’s just one long, continuous, swooping shot. There’s a sense of fun and exhilaration that has been absent from Spielberg’s work for a long time, and it’s a joy to see its return.

If there’s a problem with the film, it’s one that’s inherent in the source material, and that’s the character of Tintin himself. Tintin has always been something of a cipher, which is fine when you’re crafting a comic for young readers to project themselves into, but is problematic in a film, especially when your nominal hero is surrounded by such colourful characters. The thing is, imbue him with too many extraneous attributes and the film starts to drift from its roots, so we may be stuck with the fact that the least interesting thing in Tintin is Tintin himself.

No matter; this is still one of the most flat-out enjoyable films of the year, and the mooted sequel - which will see Spielberg and Jackson swap roles - can’t come soon enough.

_TRAVIS JOHNSON