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Generally favorable reviews - based on 40 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 333 Ratings

  • Starring: Andy Serkis, Jamie Bell
  • Summary: The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn is the first in the series of 3D motion capture films based on the iconic character Tintin, the intrepid young reporter whose relentless pursuit of a good story thrusts him into a world of high adventure. (Paramount Pictures)
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 28 out of 40
  2. Negative: 0 out of 40
  1. 100
    Everything he did in live-action movies with rolling boulders and runaway convoys he does bigger and better - by a factor of ten - in every frame. At the end of two hours, my jaw ached from grinning.
  2. Reviewed by: Steve Persall
    Dec 26, 2011
    100
    In a movie year of more than two dozen animated films, this and "Rango" tower over all others. Welcome to America, Tintin. It's great getting to know you.
  3. Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    Dec 20, 2011
    60
    The film is spectacularly constructed, from intimate closeups to dizzying chase scenes. But as is often the case with this format, the motion-capture animation feels weirdly lifeless.

See all 40 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 97 out of 107
  2. Negative: 3 out of 107
  1. A great movie that hopefully spawns a few sequels. It's got your action, humor, and mystery all included, and will appeal to people of all ages so it's a great movie to watch for a family movie night. Expand
  2. I was a longtime fan of the Tintin comics growing up, and was pleasantly surprised to see that no less than Steven Spielberg was going to direct the big screen adaptation. I thought the motion capture animation looked like an interesting idea for adding some oomph to the simple-but-charming illustrations of the original material, and I was glad to hear they decided to adapt the Secret of the Unicorn arc, which stands out as one of the best stories in the oeuvre. Unfortunately, the result was mediocre. Tintin the character is fine as portrayed ("Great snakes!"), but then he was always just the generically heroic straight man who existed mainly to keep the story moving forward. The real charm of the series has always been the supporting players, none more so than the irascible, irrepressible Captain Haddock, and this is where the movie falls short. The Captain in particular is handled just terribly; he's presented as a sloppy, drunken maniac, constantly bouncing off the walls and either bellowing at the top of his lungs or wallowing in sniveling self-pity. They reduce him to a broad comic relief buffoon who is far less entertaining than the character from the books (plus they give him a heavy Scottish brogue, which was absent from his written dialogue). Other than him, the Thomson twins are merely adequate, as is Bianca Castafiore (why they would decide to include her and leave out Professor Calculus I can't imagine). The one character I thought they really handled well was Snowy, who both looks adorable and acts like the Snowy I grew up with. While I thought the motion capture animation was fine, it bothered me how they kept bending over backwards to create enormous setpieces full of pratfalls and over-the-top destruction. Yes, Tintin gets into his share of scrapes, but he's not James Bond. It's a stretch to have him zipping all over a Middle Eastern city on a motorcycle laying waste with a bazooka and playing chicken with a building-crushing tank. And don't even get me started on the dueling cranes. All of this, plus the fact that they mashed up two distinct Tintin stories for no apparent reason, leads me to suspect the creators didn't have much appreciation for the source material and were just trying to make a generic action-comedy to pack butts into seats. Expand
  3. The dead-eyed zombies that people motion-capture films are back to foul the reputation of the most beautiful comic strip of all time. Everything has been lost. The story is feeble. The images are ugly. The voic-work is inappropriate. Stay well away. Expand

See all 107 User Reviews

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