TINTIN and his perky pup, Snowy, make a great team of master sleuths.
Steven Spielberg’s latest film, “The Adventures of Tintin,” is a delightful and sometimes even rapturous viewing experience — on different levels. At its most basic, it’s an exciting adventure yarn based on the famous French comics tales penned by Belgian artist, Georges Rémi.
Employing motion-capture techniques, it animates a briskly told story about young police reporter and crimebuster, Tintin, and how he and his sidekick pup, Snowy, foil a master criminal’s plot to get his hands on a fortune in sunken jewels and gold bullion. The caper takes them all over the globe, and on all sorts of crafts on sea, land and air, so it’s a rollicking romp from start to finish.
But, the movie’s entertainment value isn’t its best suit. To our mind, “Tintin” isn’t “only” an animated romp for children, it’s also quite often a sophisticated and prodigiously creative production that ranks among Spielberg’s best.
The master filmmaker creates a period look and feel that enhances the story’s nostalgic effect on viewers. He lines up a cast of lead and supporting characters who are deliciously idiosyncratic, like two lookalike Interpol agents with bulbous noses, who are hugely droll and entertaining due to their colossal incompetence.
Legitimate heir
Also memorably delineated is the ship captain who is the legitimate heir to the sunken treasure, but is rendered inutile due to his terrible drinking problem, and the benign, grandfatherly gent who turns out to be an inveterate kleptomaniac addicted to filching the wallets of hundreds of clueless victims — including Tintin himself, who loses the all-important secret instructions he needs to locate the treasure!
But, Spielberg makes sure that all of these colorful and vastly entertaining characters don’t steal the scene from the movie’s legitimate leads — Tintin and his perky pet and sidekick, Snowy. Indeed, it’s Snowy who is so lively and clever and frisky that he sometimes upstages his more cerebral master — but, with Tintin’s doting consent!
Aside from its ensemble of memorable characters, “The Adventures of Tintin” amazes because it makes it a point to give a number of them a thematically instructive “character arc,” like the drunken ship captain who finally comes into his forebears’ heroic patrimony.
Action scenes
Best of all, Spielberg infuses his movie’s chase and action scenes with more than just the standard physical and visual flourishes and feats of derring-do.
His action scenes are brilliantly conceived and excitingly executed, with an organic and continually surprising creativity, minute attention to telling details, and an interconnectivity that, in one particularly memorable sequence, seamlessly fuses a ship, all sorts and modes of land transportation, and a small airplane into one extended visual romp!
After viewing a brilliant scene like that, the moviegoer is astounded, and assured that a master storyteller and filmmaker is indeed in charge. All the viewer has to do is take a deep breath — and enjoy the rollicking ride!