Now, normally I might have gone to see Knock at the Cabin this past weekend and gotten a review out by now. But I caught COVID and had to stay home. I’m mostly fine as I type this. Sunday was the worst, and even then, I was mostly just congested with the occasional bad chills. I did have some moments where I couldn’t quite concentrate, but again, that was Sunday. It’s a moot point: I am not the type to go out when I am sick and in a position where I might infect others. So, I stayed home with my cat in a one bedroom apartment and waited for the disease that I remember dreading when it was still floating around and now that I have experienced it, well, it wasn’t that bad, I suppose. I still wouldn’t recommend getting it, but the point stands.
Regardless, I did watch a Steven Spielberg movie I’d never seen before, namely his animated comedy The Adventures of Tintin.
I’ve read a couple of the early Tintin stories by the Belgian cartoonist Herge, and this movie opens with a nod to the character’s creator in the form of a caricaturist who draws people to look like Herge’s drawings and a very Tintin-ish opening: while out minding his own business, Tintin and his dog Snowy do something innocuous that gets them involved in a globetrotting adventure. In this case, Tintin (Jamie Bell) decides to buy a model ship at an outdoor market. Said ship was also desired by the mysterious Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel Craig), and he’ll go to some great lengths to get it. After Snowy knocks the ship over, a small scroll falls out, and from there, well, it’s only a matter of time before Tintin gets kidnapped or something as he tries to piece together who Sakharine is and what he wants. Sure, Tintin has friends in Interpol in the form of detectives Thomson and Thompson (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and no, I don’t know which one is which because it largely doesn’t matter as they identical and both are idiots that get involved in things by accident anyway).
But with help from the resourceful Snowy and a sea captain, the alcoholic Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), Tintin is bound to get to the bottom of things. It will involve a trip to other continents, a lot of sea travel, and trying to get that drunk Haddock to remember his own family’s lore to find out what Sakharine wants from Haddock in the first place. This is a family adventure involving boats and old legends, so it’s probably a pirate treasure or something along those lines. Can Tintin figure out the mystery and save his own life in the process?
Now, for some reason, Spielberg opted to make this movie with that motion capture animation Robert Zemeckis used quite extensively for a series of rather unremarkable movies. This movie does have Spielberg’s touch, and he’s a much better director than Zemeckis ever was, plus apparently both Zemeckis and James Cameron were on-hand during the filming portion. I can’t say I see the appeal of the style. Tintin’s face is a great example of why the Uncanny Valley–the concept that the more an artificial representation of a person looks like a real person, the less the human mind will accept it as a real person–is something animators try to avoid. While the other characters look more like somewhat detailed cartoon characters, Tintin looks downright…wrong.
That said, this is clearly a labor of love for the source material. I haven’t read any with the Haddock character, but this is clearly a Tintin story where he gets involved with something somewhat by accident, Thomson and Thompson are clearly of no help whatsoever but keep trying, and the bad guy has his punishment coming to him. Spielberg reportedly became a fan of the original comics after his own Raiders of the Lost Ark was favorably compared to Tintin’s adventures. Fast-paced, exciting, funny, and safe for all ages, about the only complaint I have is the motion capture animation. Why not do it as live action or some other form of animation? Maybe draw Tintin and Co. in Herge’s style? Eh, it doesn’t matter. This was fun.
Grade: B+
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