 ***PLEASE NOTE: A Blu-ray 3D disc is only compatible with 3D Blu-ray players.*** Tagline: This year, discover how far adventure will take you. From Academy Award® winning filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson comes the epic adventures of Tintin. Racing to uncover the secrets of a sunken ship that may hold a vast fortune, but also an ancient curse, Tintin and his loyal dog Snowy embark on an action-packed journey around the world that critics are calling "fun for the whole family." - ABC-TV (Chicago) Animated adventure film bringing Hergé's Tintin to the big screen. With plot lines drawn from three Tintin stories - 'The Crab With the Golden Claws', 'The Secret of the Unicorn' and 'Red Rackham's Treasure' - the film follows intrepid young reporter Tintin as he joins forces with Captain Haddock to find the treasure of his ancestor, Sir Francis Haddoque. A clue hidden inside a model ship bought from a market stall seems to point the way to the Captain's treasure. With the assistance of accident-prone Detectives Thompson and Thomson, Tintin and Haddock set out to solve the mystery. Needless to say, however, they are not the only ones after the loot. Storyline: Having bought a model ship, the Unicorn, for a pound off a market stall Tintin is initially puzzled that the sinister Mr. Sakharine should be so eager to buy it from him, resorting to murder and kidnapping Tintin - accompanied by his marvellous dog Snowy - to join him and his gang as they sail to Morocco on an old cargo ship. Sakharine has bribed the crew to revolt against the ship's master, drunken Captain Haddock, but Tintin, Snowy and Haddock escape, arriving in Morocco at the court of a sheikh, who also has a model of the Unicorn. Haddock tells Tintin that over three hundred years earlier his ancestor Sir Francis Haddock was forced to scuttle the original Unicorn when attacked by a piratical forebear of Sakharine but he managed to save his treasure and provide clues to its location in three separate scrolls, all of which were secreted in models of the Unicorn. Tintin and Sakharine have one each and the villain intends to use the glass-shattering top Cs of operatic soprano the ... Written by don @ minifie-1 Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, March 2, 2012 You're about to walk into a whole mess of danger. If Tintin wore a Fedora, carried a whip, and took up archaeology rather than journalism, he could very well be Indiana Jones. Director Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin looks and feels an awful lot like Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade and mimics the spirit and style of all of the Indiana Jones adventures, capturing with uncanny similarity the styles, the era, the action, and the music, all resembling the director's high adventure series with darn near every scene. Indeed, The Adventures of Tintin, though based on the comics of Hergé they may be, plays as if a modern day digital creation of an Indiana Jones-worthy adventure. Yet no matter how closely it resembles Spielberg's famed quartet of pictures, there's no denying that The Adventures of Tintin works very well on its own; there's just enough difference in the stories and styles -- the digital motion capture versus pure live action, the absence of a love story, the slightly toned-down violence and the somewhat more family-friendly vibe, the emphasis on playful mystery rather than hard action and adventure -- that Tintin succeeds as its own entity and not just a companion to or curiosity for fans of Raiders, Temple, Crusade, and Skull. The Adventures of Tintin is a fun, rollicking adventure to say the least; it's breathtakingly exciting, structurally captivating, and an amazing achievement of digital filmmaking that's on the cutting edge of moviemaking technology with every frame. A young investigative reporter named Tintin (Jamie Bell) and his trusty dog Snowy stumble across a prize that Tintin just has to have: a replica of the famed vessel Unicorn, a triple-masted, double-decked ship with no less than fifty guns at her disposal. The real Unicorn set sail in 1776, was lost under mysterious circumstances, and may have been carrying secret cargo. As for its model, it's choice, one Tintin acquires for the bargain price of a single Pound. As soon as the money exchanges hands and the product is officially under the auspices of a new owner, others come-a-calling for it, including Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel Craig), a devious mystery man with long-held ties to the real Unicorn, a man familiar with the secrets this model holds. Of course, Tintin isn't selling for any price. Misfortune -- or perhaps a stroke of fate -- strikes; an altercation between Snowy and a stray cat destroys the ship, but out slips a secret cylinder which rolls underneath Tintin's cabinet. He heads to that local library to learn more about the Unicorn but comes home to find the ship missing. He's able to track it -- or rather another replica -- down at Marlinspike Hall, leading him to another confrontation with Sakharine and the revelation of parts of the mystery these models hold. Tintin returns home to a ransacked flat, but he does manage to discover the lost cylinder and find inside of it one of three clues necessary to piece together the greater puzzle. He places the slip of paper inside his wallet, which is pinched by a local pickpocket; to get it back, Tintin will have to rely on the investigative skills -- or lack thereof -- of a pair of bumbling detectives known collectively as "The Thompsons" (Nck Frost and Simon Pegg). Moments after losing his wallet, Tintin is kidnapped and imprisoned aboard the Karaboudjan, a vessel commandeered by none other than Sakharine. There, he meets up with that ship's imprisoned skipper, Haddock (Andy Serkis), with whom Tintin and Snowy escape and begin a race against Sakharine to uncover the secrets of the Unicorn while dodging numerous attempts on their lives along their way towards destiny. In essence, there are two readily-evident elements that work the hardest in making The Adventures of Tintin a successful 21st century movie. The most obvious are the digital renderings, and what a sight to behold they are. The Adventures of Tintin makes use of what is fundamentally the same technology utilized in the creation of Robert Zemeckis' The Polar Express, but here with appreciably superior results. The picture is absolutely sublime, the digital captures and environments perhaps the most photorealistic ever to appear in a picture, certainly of the performance capture variety and arguably even when comparing it against more "traditional" digital renderings (and what a world to live in when digital filmmaking can now be referenced as "traditional"). Though the movie won't be mistaken for live action, it passes itself off as such at least at-a-glance, and it's clear that the line between the real and the artificial is already blurred and will be erased out completely in a matter of years, not decades. The Adventures of Tintin dazzles with the veritable ease by which it creates an entire world -- buildings, roadways, vegetation, water -- with such convincing attention to absolute realism, right down to the most subtle little texture, the most minuscule detail that allows the environments to pass off as about 98% real. And it's the way water gently rolls with appreciable body and texture, the way clothing naturally wrinkles and shifts with character movement, the way human and canine hair blow in the breeze that make this so convincing. Every character is detailed right down to the smallest crease in skin, freckle, or stubble of facial hair. It's truly a sight to behold, even as it carries a certain style reflective of a flat, two-dimensional, decades-old comic. Yet The Adventures of Tintin proves far greater than the sum of its visual excellence; there's a nifty, action-packed story populated with quality characters to be enjoyed, too. At its core, and beyond the superficialities of the animation, lies an entertaining high adventure romp that's clean and family-friendly, perhaps a bit dark and violent at times, but generally safe for younger audiences. The movie hearkens back to the comic and serial high adventures of its era, again like Indiana Jones, this movie serving up a fairly simple but rather physically-involved mystery, supported by well-conceived and superbly-executed action and a light comic underbelly. There's some exemplary action scenes, some things which would prove a bit more challenging in a straight live-action film -- a character hanging by his collar off the barrel of a rolling tank encased in the shell of a building -- but here even the most outrageous stunt fits seamlessly into the whole. The picture is extra-daring but still family-friendly. Better, the characters are very well put together. Tintin, like Indiana Jones, is something more of a brain but with the physical capacity to pull off some nifty tricks in the midst of action when the adrenaline is pumping, using a combination of quick wit, physical skill, and an understanding of how things work to his advantage. The Captain Haddock character boozes his way through the movie, usually to high comic effect and, generally, to the necessity of the plot. Though by far the elder character, he represents the bumbling sidekick to the mature-for-his-age Tintin. The tandem works very well, even if the good Captain is often more along for the ride though critical to the plot he may be. The Adventures of Tintin defines light, family-appropriate cinema action and adventure on the grandest of scales. The movie's photorealistic animation, quality story, and good characters come together with little effort. The Spielberg magic is evident even without a single natural life form to be seen in the end product, and John Williams' score is as rousing, playful, and full of adventurous spirit as always. Certainly, The Adventures of Tintin may only be a digital and re-imagined take on the world of Indiana Jones, but it works well enough on its own merits, with its own characters, its own ideas, and its own rhythm, though certainly the connections -- all the way to the setting and the names appearing under "director" and "composer" on the billing block -- are impossible to miss. The Adventures of Tintin brings back the classic goodhearted, safe Adventure film, made by people who love movies and care as much about heart, plot, and characters as they do sensationalism, all of which this movie offers in abundance. Paramount's Blu-ray 3D release of The Adventures of Tintin is fantastic. The movie just seems to gel in 3D, that extra dimension the last little piece of the puzzle to make this almost the perfect watch. The 3D release carries over the same fantastic 7.1 lossless soundtrack and collection of extras. This is certainly a release in the running for a spot on 2012's "best of" list and earns my highest recommendation. [CSW] -2.2- I'm sorry to say that I found the story close to nonexistent and the storytelling closer to a watching video game. Kids may enjoy the video game aspect without needing a cohesive story to back it up but I certainly need it. I won't be adding the 3D version to my collection even for the sake of my younger viewers. The following review pretty well sums up my thoughts: It looks and feels like a video game, technical gimmicks and some very long action sequence. Sorry to say it, but the story is so thin and the tempo is like watching a hyperactive spoiled kid, trying to make a movie in fast forward mode. Spielberg got the power in the industry, but has become the spoiled child that nobody dares to tell when his ideas are counterproductive to the "good-of-the-story". Jurassic park was magic, with CGI-effects the right places. Spielbergs Tintin is a CGI-nightmare on steroids, drained of both soul and story. But... The 3D eye candy would be worh it if the price was low enough. (i.e., < $10) [V4.5-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - D-Box slightly enhanced this movie. Cast Notes: Jamie Bell (Tintin [voice]), Andy Serkis (Captain Haddock / Sir Francis Haddock [voice]), Daniel Craig (Sakharine / Red Rackham [voice]), Nick Frost (Thomson [voice]), Simon Pegg (Thompson [voice]), Daniel Mays (Allan / Pirate Flunky #1 [voice]), Gad Elmaleh (Ben Salaad [voice]), Toby Jones (Silk [voice]), Joe Starr (Barnaby [voice]), Enn Reitel (Nestor / Mr. Crabtree [voice]), Mackenzie Crook (Tom / Pirate Flunky #2 [voice]), Tony Curran (Lieutenant Delcourt [voice]), Sonje Fortag (Mrs. Finch [voice]), Cary Elwes (Pilot [voice]), Phillip Rhys (Co-Pilot / French Medic [voice]). IMDb Rating (07/01/18): 7.4/10 from 194,764 users
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