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Film Review

Fans of Tintin comics must leave behind the series before watching the film. The Adventures of Tintin is a combo of three books, Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and ‘Red Rackham’s Treasure, but the film starts with the second, goes back to the first before jumping to the third.

About five minutes into the movie, Tintin finds the third model of the Unicorn, only to be mobbed by two other collectors of similar models.

Very soon, Tintin realises the Unicorn has a dark secret and tries to find out why others are desperately after a model ship.

The two collectors and the ship take him to Marlinspike Hall (Secret), the Karaboudjan and Captain Haddock (Crab). A scroll found inside the mast of his model ship mentions a Haddock, so the meeting with the captain only adds to the excitement.

Again, after a little more biff-bang-pow and rat-a-tat than the book, but as much drinking by the captain and acts of courage and bumbling by various characters, the guys reach the Sahara desert.

The screenplay writers (Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish) should be given credit for knitting up a cool new piece from what is available, using creative liberty intelligently. A person not introduced to the series will hardly complain.

Of course, there is an entire bunch of complaints by die-hard fans. The Milanese Nightingale has hardly ever sung anything other than the Jewel Song; the villain of the movie, Sakharine, appears for not more than five pages in Secret; and where are the Bird brothers, on whom the Secret is centred?

The primary actors do a good job presenting the original characters. But Tintin is easily the most boring of the regular characters- he is too correct and does not have a comic side.

The Captain is the typical drunkard found in The Crab…, although he is far sober in The Secret…. Snowy is both intelligent and funny as in the book, the Thompsons as bungling as ever (maybe a little lesser, as they appear too a little lesser). Bianca Castafiore is ‘adorable’, with her glass-shattering voice.

Credit must be given to the make-up artistes too for getting the actors to look almost like the characters in the series.

The Adventures of Tintin promises more fun, thrills et all in the coming days. Go for it.