Tintinis an old comic created by Herge. Huge in Europe, Tintin never really caught on here. He’s a young detective who solves wondrous globe spanning mysteries with his trusty dog Snowy. A menagerie of characters accompany and hinder Tintin in the many stories that Herge wrote over a 50 year span.

This movie, spearheaded by Stephen Spielberg and Peter Jackson merges 2 stories, “The Crab with the Golden Claws” and “The Secret of the Unicorn”. The film feels and looks a lot like an Indiana Jones movie ( a lot better than Crystal Skull). It takes place in 1930 in various dusty locals around the world. The visuals are the most striking of all, by far the best motion capture based animation films I’ve seen. Realistic character movement and facial animation, incredible environmental effects. Easily on par with the best Pixar has offered to date. Given the virtual space, Spielberg went with a full digital camera system (as first used in 2006’s Monster House I think). This allowed him to move the camera around in ways that’s impossible to do in real life. The action set pieces often use these sweeping and long camera takes that are pretty breathtaking to be hold.

It’s a really well made movie, a lot of care and work went into this. Not being familiar with the original works, I can’t comment on how well they translated Tintin to the screen, but I liked what I saw. It’s a fun, adventurous story with memorable characters and great action. Recommended to everyone.