Tintin in the Uncanny Valley
These traits have more than compensated for deficits that, in a director with a personal life and less of an inclination toward the lowest common denominator, would have proved fatal: a lack of creativity, not knowing when to end a movie and the music of John Williams.
Look, a cure for insomnia.
Even Spielberg's three most (only?) innovative movies -- Jaws, Close Encounters and ET (the youngest of which is now, yikes, thirty years old) -- are chalk-full of stock characters and eye-rolling dialogue.
But, thanks to his superhuman energy, Spielberg managed to have the top two holiday movies in 2011 -- War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin. Both take place in the first half of the last century in Europe and feature the bland accompaniment of John Williams; and the best thing about each is that they look awesome.
The similarities end there.
I preferred watching Tintin, mostly because it didn't make me sob and snot all over my neck scarf, but I couldn't escape the feeling that a different director would have made a better movie.
Say, Wes Anderson in the charming, stop-motion vein of Fantastic Mr. Fox. Stop-motion is expensive and it takes forever, but the results are worth it. Motion capture, on the other hand, tries to approximate humans by turning them into pictures, but it usually doesn't work very well -- they aren't cute enough to tug at our heartstrings, but they're not real enough for us to relate to. This is what they call the "uncanny valley."
Tintin does a better job than most because the art direction followed the original comic strips so carefully: The characters don't even begin to resemble any actual human, which helps us to suspend our sense of disbelief and immerse ourselves into the story. And for once, that story is only 107 minutes long, flying in the face Spielberg's penchant for stories that take at least 150 minutes to grind to a halt. (Thanks for that, Steven.)
For those not familiar with the beloved comics, Tintin (Jamie Bell) is a boy journalist who, along with his dog pal Snowy, are constantly wrapping themselves up in international intrigues. Tintin doesn't seem to actually journalize so much as get himself into trouble. In this one, Tintin comes to buy a model ship that is apparently coveted by the sinister Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel Craig) and the mysterious Barnaby. Not surprisingly, the model hides a partial map to the treasure contained in the original, life-size ship from the 17th century.
Tintin is abducted by Sakharine's thugs and imprisoned aboard a ship, where he must join forces with the drunken Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis, aka Gollum), whose ancestor, coincidentally, had piloted the original treasure ship, to stop Sakharine from finding the treasure.
The adventure involves a transnational journey across Europe and North Africa by ship and seaplane, as well as some creative swordplay. The best part of the movie are Nick Frost and Simon Pegg as the nearly identical bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson. They are the only truly humorous characters in the story, and nobody could have played them better than Frost and Pegg, who have made an art at being inept.
The Adventures of Tintin isn't the best kids' movie of 2011, but it's exciting, nostalgic and just funny enough to keep things moving.
