The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn Review

Animation the one thing that I love about reviewing films that every so often you get the chance to review something that you yourself havn't seen and this is one of those cases. I was always a where of this film since I was kind of familiar with the 90's Tintin series and i'm a fan of both Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson and so here it is at last my review of The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

The plot of the movie is Tintin and Captain Haddock set of on a globe trotting adventure to try and find the ship that was once captained by Haddock's own ancestor. I will admit that chances are there's alot more going on in this film in terms of plot but it was so hard to describe and that was the best that I could do. In terms of what I thought of the story it was a decent story but in my opinion there was so much going on because there's also a subplot involving Thompson and Thompson which does make it a little hard to keep up with what's going on.

Starring in the film is Jamie Bell as Tintin , Andy Serkis as Captain Archibald Haddock and Sir Francis Haddock , Daniel Craig as Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine and Red Rackham , Nick Frost and Simon Pegg as Thomson and Thompson , Toby Jones as Aristides Silk , Daniel Mays as Allan , Mackenzie Crook as Tom , Gad Elmaleh as Omar ben Salaad , Joe Starr as Barnaby Dawes and Rami Malek as Kester Moorhouse.

In all honesty the acting in the film is of the standerd of which one would expect from a Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson production. As per usual Andy Serkis just kills it in this film and proves that he should be nominated for an OSCAR and once again makes me wonder why he hasn't been nominated for one yet. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as you'd expect by now work wonderfully of each other and that's not a surprise given that they are basically best friends.

This was the first animated film to feature animation done by Weta Digital and for there first time they really did a good job. They used motion capture on all of the human characters and that is where the animation is at it's best in my opinion. Where the animation fails is with the animals because there animated in my opinion far two cartoony where as the human characters are done with more realism and the two just don't mix in my opinion.

The human characters are also done to look photo realistic which I can see some people being put of by that fact but it wasn't something that put me of personally. In my opinion Weta Digital should make another animated film just so they can learn from the mistakes made in this film but given that they have a full as heck schedule as it is that's not something that i can see happening anytime soon which is a shame because the animation for the most part is really good.

I'm a huge Doctor Who fan and I have been since 2005 but I had no idea that former show runner and producer Steven Moffat had a hand in writing the script for this film. To me that is just such a cool thing because this is a story that is something he'd write but it's not Steven at his best in my opinion which is a shame because he's a great writer and that's something that he's proven time and time again on many occasions.

He's not the only talented writer working on this film because the film is co-written by Steven , Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish. That is one hell of a writing team and one that any film would be glad to have as it's writers but like with Steven these guys aren't at there best if you want to see Edgar at his best check out Hot Fuzz and i've not seen anything that Joe has written outside of this film so I can't make any kind of recommendation.

One thing that I noticed while watching the film is that Tintin is kind of like Indiana Jones since like Indy he's always just barely escaping any action scene he's in and like Indy he has a first for adventure. Now of course the Tintin comic books have been around since before Indiana Jones but one cannot help but make those connections especially given that alot of the Indiana Jones crew worked on this film.

One of the scenes that is both the most fun and the most like a video game is the bike chase scene when that scene got going to me it felt like a video game level and from a movie that's not what I want to be feeling. On the plus side tho it is the most fun scenes in the film and alot of that comes from the fact that during that sequence there's a lot going on both in terms of action and in terms of comedy and that helps make it a really fun scene in my humble opinion.

Incase your wondering why this film review has a really long title it's because that's what the film was called here in the UK. So that's what I know the film as and I have no idea why they added on the subtle since on the one hand it makes sense given that there's a TV series called The Adventures Of Tintin but on the other hand people would have known that it's a movie just by who's involved with the project.

Of course we have alot of comedy coming from Thompson and Thompson and in all honesty the comedy isn't to great. The comedy in this film feels like the type of comedy that a guy in his fifties thinks a kid would find funny when all it is is just unfunny and sad. That is a real shame because both Nick Frost and Simon Pegg are clearly trying there best to make the comedy work but even they couldn't make it work.

There is some action in this film but not that much and like I said before one of those action scenes feels like a video game level. That said tho when you think of Tintin you don't really think of action scenes if anything you think of someone sneaking around getting clues and not trying and failing to hit someone on the head with bottle. It just seems like a weird thing to do since if i'm right Tintin isn't known for having action scenes so why did they they put them in here.

Overall i'm glad I can say that i've seen this film and if the other two films in the trilogy do get made i'd be interested in seeing how the rest of the story plays out but that being said this a fairly bad film but given it comes from two talented directors it's not that bad and so it gets a 7.5 out of 10 from me.