The Adventures of Tintin2011

76/100 How come Spielberg makes a better adventure movie when he's not handling Indiana Jones? It's almost unfair how good this is compared to the steaming pile of average that preceded it. Seriously, the movie knows how to do action-adventure great, with tons of great action sequences which have great energy and do a good job keeping us thrilled. The tradeoff for this is a breakneck pacing which makes it hard to get attached to any of the characters, but it's made up for with how well they're acted and performed. Speaking of performances, the motion capture here is a mixed bag. I do think this is the best among the movies following this trend, as the characters strike a relatively good balance between realism and animatedness. However, there's still some "uncanny valley" here which can take time to get used to. The performances, however, save it for me. I love Andy Serkis as Captain Haddock especially, he really saves the movie for me, and Jamie Bell does reasonably well as Tintin. John Williams' score here is of course great as ever, I feel like that's a prerequisite by now. The jazz for the main theme was unexpected, but it kind of works, if in an absurd way, sounding both adventurous and mature. And that's basically this whole film: an absurd premise executed brilliantly. Now, this isn't the best film so far, not even close, but it was fun going back to a family movie, especially an animated one, after all the adult films. I'd definitely show this to my kids someday, and overall, I'd proclaim it very good.