Raiders of the Lost Tintin

Spielberg's first foray in the field of digital animation was unsurprisingly technically adept but sadly disappointing in many respects. Visually it was highly accomplished with beautifully detailed backgrounds which bring the right atmosphere to every scene. The characters were less successful due to some curious design decisions. Tintin himself is rendered in a way which seems to be aiming for photorealism yet is surrounded by a cast of caricatures, giving the impression that they should not really inhabit the same world.

They also speak with an odd assortment of accents too, for example in the opening scenes the setting is clearly Belgium yet it seems to be inhabited by mainly cockney geezers. Captain Haddock is Scottish for some unexplained reason. Perhaps the filmmakers had seen Shrek and concluded 'guys with Scottish accents are funny!'

The plot was quite thin and seemed to exist as a means to string together various action scenes more than anything else. These seemed very much inspired by the Indiana Jones series resulting in a movie which lacks the feel of the original source material. The fact that Tintin is a reporter was barely mentioned in the script. I found it hard to tell who the intended audience for this film was as it was too simplistic and lacking in depth for adults yet some of the content such as Haddock's alcoholism seemed unsuitable for children. Spielberg's attempts at comedy consistently fell flat, suggesting that he has no flair for this type of material.

It is many years since I read one of Herge's original stories but I seem to recall that the lead character was very charming. In Jamie Bell's interpretation he seemed to lack this charisma and came across as mildly annoying. He is accompanied on his adventures by his faithful hound Snowy, another attempt at creating a computer-generated pooch which joins Scooby Doo in the list of weird looking canines when rendered in such a way. Cute he ain't!

Tintin provides passable entertainment but I felt that it could have been so much better. On this evidence Spielberg will have to raise his game a lot in order to begin competing with the likes of Pixar.

5/10