THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN
4 out of 5 stars

tintin: “how’s your thirst for adventure, captain?”
capt. haddock: “unquenchable, tintin.”

not bad... spielberg tackles the animation genre, and brings the old belgium cartoon tintin unto the big screen! it definitely has the look and feel of a spielberg movie esp. certain scenes echoing his indiana jones films, but i think for a mystery, the plot was a bit too predictable and shallow. regardless, still loved it! esp. snowy... reminds me of my lil’ woofy... ;)

if you aren’t familiar with the old belgium comic strip tintin, you’re young. :P (hahahahaha, j/k...) it was a comic strip back in the 1920s – 1950s, and steven spielberg decides to educate us young folk by making it into a movie. besides who reads comic strips these days??? anyway, redhead tintin (voiced by jamie bell) finds an old ship in a bottle while browsing in an euro outdoor market with his doggie snowy, and immediately someone who looks and smells like a g-man approaches him, asking to buy it from him and such. a guy named sakharine (voiced by daniel craig) also tries to buy it from him, but tintin holds his ground and takes it home. snowy gets into a fight/chase with the neighbor’s cat, and breaks the darn thing...BUT reveals a small scroll that’ll lead tintin to an even bigger mystery! he’s then kidnapped by sakharine’s men, and imprisoned on a ship called the SS karaboujan. on board, tintin manages to escape using his mcguyver type skills, and meets up with the infamous capt. haddock (voiced by andy serkis AKA gollum!), who’s also been imprisoned/kept drunk this whole time while his crew mutinied and took over under the influence of sakharine. as it turns out, there are 3 ships that look exactly the same as the one tintin bought in the market, and sir francis haddock AKA capt. haddock’s ancestor during the days of swash-bucklin’ pirates decided to sink the treasure his ship was carrying, rather than allow it in the hands of evil pirate red rackham. so, where’s the treasure now? good question...and tintin and snowy get on the case! ;)

the production quality of this one was really well done, and you have to give extra credit points to the folks at dreamworks and team spielberg for pulling this one off. i’m not really a big fan of the quasi-real life faces in this movie because i felt like because tintin was already animated, why not just 3D-ify the characters? regardless, the action sequences in this one make up for that! the mystery, itself, was predictable even for a kid’s movie, and i guess that’s where pixar excels at. (i.e. good storytelling) still...not bad if you like good animation and cute dogs. :)