The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

Firstly, I have to admit that I’m losing the passion for this.  Once I accomplished my #movieaday goal last year, I became less and less interested in watching movies just for the sake of keeping this streak alive.  Now I’m on a terrible work schedule that directly conflicts with me being alive, and I’ve seen the pool of my movies I’ve banked dwindle down to 3 or 4 movies ahead of the day.  I have no idea if this blog is viewed daily by people aside from the links I post on my Twitter, but living up to the title of this blog is becoming less and less of a priority for me.  The other option is just re-posting a whole bunch of my old reviews, but that seems disingenuous to me if I’m not actually watching them again.  Just mentioning all this in case you don’t see daily updates here anymore.  On to the movie.

I’ve been playing a lot of Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception on my PS3 lately, and that is the easiest comparison I can make to Tintin: it feels like I’m watching Uncharted: The Movie.  Not because the motion-capture animation used by Tintin is so close to the near-realistic graphics of U3, not just because of the similar Indiana Jones-esque plot lines and treasure hunting themes.  (I am aware that Tintin has been around for decades before all these things I’m making comparisons to, but I’ve never read one of the comics)  No, it’s mostly because both of the projects feel that they strove so hard for realism that when they have ridiculous set pieces and controller schemes/character movements that it all feels so very manufactured instead of organic.  I hope someone out there knows exactly what I mean by that, I’m tired of talking about it.

Generally speaking, the mocap animation is freakishly well-done, and definitely standing on the uncanny valley line.  Tintin (Jamie Bell) looks weirdly like a very young Simon Pegg, and then Pegg and his chum Nick Frost show up as detectives, making it weirder, and one of the characters that Andy Serkis plays and voices sounds like it’s Gerard Butler voicing him and it was all so off-putting to me.  I don’t even know if kids would love this movie, as I thought it was decent enough, but ultimately unsatisfied by the whole experience (much like my Uncharted 3 feelings), which is fairly odd for me when it comes to Steven Spielberg-directed films.

3 / 5