"The Adventures of Tintin" Review

I grew up reading Herge's The Adventures of Tintin, a comic book series of sorts about an intrepid boy reporter and his pet dog who scour the globe in search of good stories and frequently end up in all kinds of trouble. The stories are great to return to even as an adult, and while this motion capture-animated adaptation from director Steven Spielberg captures some of the spirit of Herge's characters, ultimately I found the film to be somewhat lacking.

The film is mainly adapted from two of Herge's stories, The Secret of the Unicorn and The Crab with the Golden Claws, though characters and situations from other stories are added. Tintin (Jamie Bell) buys a model ship which quickly proves to be a highly sought-after item, and he and his dog Snowy eventually find themselves imprisoned aboard a ship run by the nefarious Sakharine (Daniel Craig). In a race with Sakharine to uncover the secret behind the clues found within the model ship, Tintin teams up with Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) in a quest that takes them from Belgium (though it's never identified as such) to Morocco and back.

Since this film is an amalgamation of Herge's stories, the main thing I was looking for as a fan of the comics is whether Spielberg and writers Joe Cornish, Edgar Wright, and Steven Moffat were able to capture the tone of the stories and the characters. The characters are all very well done, particularly Tintin and Captain Haddock. If lines such as "Great snakes!," "Blue blistering barnacles!," and "Ten thousand thundering typhoons!" mean anything to you, you'll be rolling in your seat and maybe even cheering at some of these moments. But while the characters were generally done very well, the chase / action nature of the film didn't jibe well with the comics, which have much more of an investigative mystery feel. Yes there are bits of action here and there, but nothing like the half hour long climax of the film, a sequence that spans two continents and goes on probably twice as long as it should have.The animation is extremely detailed and well done, and the motion capture work is some of the best I've ever seen, probably even better than the work done in "Avatar."  But while the film is impressive from a visual and character standpoint, ultimately the story doesn't hold up as it degenerates from a mystery into endless action. Ultimately I left the film with kind of a ho-hum feeling, and when asked what I thought of it, the best I could come up with was "It was okay."

"The Adventures of Tintin" is rated PG for adventure action violence, some drunkenness, and brief smoking.
Running time: 107 minutes.
Released domestically on December 21, 2011, by Paramount Pictures.
2.5 stars out of 4.