Let me just say that I knew this movie was coming for years. From the day I first read the Tintin comics and said this would make a pretty good movie, to the days when comic book movies were bigger than ever. I knew that the Tintin movie would eventually come to theatres. And so when I saw the trailer for the first time, I was hyped. Elijah Wood as Tintin – perfect choice. I was terrified they were going to cast somebody like Michael Cera or Zac Ephron as Tintin but thankfully Zac Ephron was busy making New Years and the Lorax so they got Elijah Wood, and for the better.
The animation is the first thing one has to comment on and it is beautiful. Normally, I have a problem with animated movies that are trying to look extremely realistic. I figure if you are going to go for that you might as well just cast real actors. But for Tintin there is just no way it could be live action. There is only one way to capure the scale, atmosphere and above all, colour that Tintin encompasses and that is why I didn’t mind the animation. It was nothing like Mars Meets Moms, which not only shouldn’t have been animated, it probably shouldn’t have been made. But that’s a whole other, and probably much longer review.
The characters looked spot on – Thompson and Thompson – perfect. Captain Haddock – perfect. Tintin – still looks a lot looks Elijah Wood, but we’ll let that one slide. Snowy is done very well too. If there is one character that would be tricky to get a handle on, it would be Snowy. But they do it fairly well, so props to that.
The story, which is a combination of the Crab with the Golden Claw and The Secret of the Unicorn, is very well put together. The mystery is clever, but not too vague, so the audience can figure it out as the characters do, sometimes earlier. There’s a twist involving the wording of a riddle which Tintin figured out about three scenes after I had. But the way it all builds is clever and well done. There are three really big action scenes in this movie – two of them fight scenes, one of them a chase scene. The first is a flashback to a battle at sea and is the best part of the movie. If Pirates of the Caribbean was animated, this is what it would be. It’s fast-paced, cut-throat, toungue in cheek, and again, has some pretty decent twists in it. Though again, ones you can figure out many scenes before the characters do. The second fight scene mostly consists of two cranes duelling each other . And I’m not talking the bird, I’m talking the giant metal piece of construction equipment. Because let’s face it, who hasn’t looked up at two cranes at work and thought, “Gee, I wonder what would happen if they hit each other?”. Well, fear not, Tintin had the answer and believe me, it is unbelievably exciting.
Are there downsides to this movie, well, yes. The chase scene that happens in the second act is pretty goofy and sort of disturbing when you really think about it, but I can’t really say any more without giving away the entire chase. Another downside is the villain. The second he walks onscreen and I do mean the second, you know that he’s the villain. Even with Scar from the Lion King it at least took me a few seconds. But there is no excuse, this guy is transparent as hell! Are there good parts about him? Yes, his voice is pretty well done. And he does have one thing that gives every single villain fifty extra villain points in my books – a sword inside of his cane – which just screams awesomeness. You can have a character that becomes a villain but you can have a character that pulls that pulls a sword from his cane who becomes a boss! Even really bad movies like the secret of Nim two knew that a sword in the cane just gives that villain a little extra ‘oomph’.
The comic relief in this movie is good and does capture the spirit of the comics very well. If you didn’t read the comics, you can still enjoy Tintin. But if you did, you will LOVE Tintin! I would easily recommend this movie and it is probably one of the best animated movies I’ve seen in a while. But then again when you are going up against stuff like Cars Two and Mars Needs Moms it’s not exactly hard competition.