The Adventures of Tintin | Film review

Even Steven Spielberg can’t climb his way out of the uncanny valley. With The Adventures of Tintin, the Hollywood honcho tries his hand at the same motion-capture animation style Robert Zemeckis has dabbled in since The Polar Express (2004). Advancements aside, mo-cap still hasn’t mastered the human factor; every character here boasts the usual waxwork features, rubbery limbs and cold, dead eyes. If Andy Serkis, moviedom’s premier digital performer, can’t lend his avatar a spark of life, maybe it’s time to cut our losses on this dubious technology.

Then again, it would take a lot more than a change in medium to buy Tintin a soul. This franchise hopeful feels as hollow and impersonal as anything Spielberg has ever directed. Expending most of his wit and visual invention on a Catch Me if You Can–style credits sequence, the filmmaker wastes little time introducing his titular hero (Jamie Bell), a dashing but nondescript young reporter. The plot, faithfully pinched from Hergé’s Belgian comic-book source, is a generic, globe-trotting treasure hunt that pairs Tintin with a drunken sea captain (Serkis) and pits him against a conniving, aristocratic villain (Daniel Craig).

Spielberg stages a few nifty, fluid action sequences—a motorcycle chase, a battle between dueling cranes—but inspiration eludes him. (Why recruit the impish imaginations behind Doctor Who, Shaun of the Dead and this year’s Attack the Block if you’re just going to render their script contributions invisible?) Tintin is already garnering comparisons to Raiders of the Lost Ark, but that’s like confusing a flight simulator for an F-16.