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23 The Adventures Of Tintin:
The Secret Of The Unicorn
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Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost
There was understandable trepidation before the first footage of Tintin was unveiled. Nobody wanted a Spielberg/Jackson team-up feature to look as strangely repulsive as any of Robert Zemekis’s mo-cap monstrosities. So when we first got to see Tintin’s lush, photo-realistic digi-locations and a total absence of uncanny valley queasiness, we all breathed a mighty sigh of relief.
A fizzy script, courtesy of Steven Moffat, Joe Cornish and Edgar Wright, channelled the spirit of Hergé into the multiplex blockbuster and saw Spielberg using film muscles he hasn’t used since the first Indiana Jones films (let’s forget about Crystal Skull , eh?).
In fact, this film was what the last Indy should have been. Ambitious, funny, scary and with a beating heart at the centre of it. One note for the second film though: Peter, could you make Tintin look a little less like Wayne Rooney next time? It’s very distracting. Thanks.
Best moment: At the very beginning, when Tintin is being sketched, and the eventual portrait is an exact copy of Hergé’s Tintin.
Steve O’Brien
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