2011 (USA / New Zealand)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Viewed: December 17, 2011
Format: Digital Theatrical Projection (Wehrenberg Des Peres 14)
Adapting the beloved Tintin stories to film has been a passion project for Steven Spielberg for nearly three decades. The director first sought to option the work of Belgian comic artist Hergé in 1983, after the runaway success of Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial had solidified Spielberg’s reputation as a Hollywood powerhouse. Twenty-eight years is a staggeringly long time for a film to languish in Development Hell, but the feature that has finally emerged, The Adventures of Tintin, is no worse the wear for its long gestation. In fact, Tintin is that rarest of things in this era when aggressive, directionless ugliness dominates the cinema of big-budget spectacle: a work in which cutting-edge technology allows a genuine film artist to express themselves without the usual analog limitations. It’s telling that the seeds of Tintin were planted by the Steven Spielberg of 1983, a man who had so recently given the world Raiders, one of the most perfect action-adventure films of all time. The Adventures of Tintin—which is, astonishingly, the first animated feature of the director’s career—gives splendid, ebullient expression to the same rousing spirit of derring-do that suffused the first chapter of the Indiana Jones saga. Moreover, Tintin finds the veteran director newly empowered by the potential of the digital film-making space, where his camera can be anywhere and move in any way he might imagine.
Adored in his native Belgium and among comics aficionados the world over, the eponymous Tintin is a young reporter of uncertain age and boundless pluck, who has an affinity for stumbling into globe-trotting adventures with his loyal wire fox terrier, Snowy. Adapted by a trio of British screenwriters—Steven Moffat, Joe Cornish, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World director Edgar Wright—The Adventures of Tintin incorporates three of Hergé’s Tintin stories: The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn, and Red Rackham’s Treasure. Apart from amalgamating the various plot elements from these books, the only significant change that the script makes to the source material is to switch Tintin’s nationality from Belgian to British, an alteration that is no doubt heretical among more impassioned devotees of the ginger-haired journalist. However, this change allows the characters to speak in English without the need for distracting logical leaps, while also preserving the decaying colonial tone of Tintin’s mid-twentieth-century escapades.
The film’s events begin with Tintin’s purchase of an antique model ship, and from there proceed to all manner of chases, escapes, fisticuffs, and shoot-outs, at locales ranging from the streets of London to an ocean freighter to a Moroccan palace. To say more about the story would rob the viewer of one of the primary pleasures of The Adventures of Tintin: A thrilling awareness that the next clue could take Tintin and Snowy anywhere in the world and reveal almost any wonder. Aside from Tintin himself (Jamie Bell), the film features many iconic Hergé characters, including the perpetually soused Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), the imperious Ivanonvich Sakharine (Daniel Craig), bumbling police inspectors Thompson and Thompson (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost), pickpocket Silk (Toby Jones), and opera diva Bianca Castafiore (Kim Stengel). Created with motion-capture animation from Weta Digital, the film boasts a unique look that is at once realistic and cartoonish. Rather than attempt an animated realization of Hergé’s style, Tintin uses the character designs of the cartoonist’s original stories as a reference point and then extrapolates from there. The result is something that is more soft and natural than the exaggerated plasticity of most computer-animated characters, but also obviously drawn from the traditions of European comic art. As such, it seldom risks the Uncanny Valley of Robert Zemeckis’ digital monsters.
Beyond the characters, the world of The Adventures of Tintin is almost ludicrously detailed and gorgeous, an ever-so-slightly stylized vision of the mid-twentieth century. Unlike the setting of the Indiana Jones films, Tintin’s world is mostly free of supernatural threats, and as such the obstacles that the reporter and his dog confront seem downright prosaic from a twenty-first century vantage. There are encrypted riddles, secret compartments, locked doors, trackless oceans, searing deserts, and lots of goons with guns. Contemporary viewers might ask, “Shouldn’t there be some mummies or aliens in there?” Perish the thought. One of the film’s singular achievements is how marvelously thrilling Tintin’s materially-grounded adventures seem, in part because the work is saturated with such giddy affection for its source material, without being embarrassingly slavish or self-referential. However, it’s also due to Speilberg’s enviable skill at rendering elemental action sequences—e.g. Snowy chasing a truck through the London streets—with breathtaking vigor and wit.
That skill achieves its unrestrained potential in Tintin, as the unfettered director luxuriates in the liberation of his virtual camera. For some film-makers, such freedom can become an excuse for indulgent flourishes and headache-inducing excess. Not so with Spielberg, for while Tintin is often breathless and frenetic, it is also one of the most visually seamless and handsome things that the director has ever created. In short, Spielberg takes to the realms of computer animation like a sailor takes to drink, and the result is by turns jaw-dropping and just plain heavenly. A bravura escape sequence through a desert port on a hill—presented as a single, unbroken shot that swoops through windows and roars down narrow alleys—is probably the most thrilling thing to bear Spielberg’s name since Dr. Jones dangled from the grill of a cargo truck. Tintin’s scene is lessened only by the knowledge that it did not require the blood, sweat, and tears of analog stuntwork.
However, what’s truly novel about Tintin is not the meticulous choreography of its action set pieces—although I am hard-pressed to recall a feature film that is this flat-out gorgeous while also moving very, very fast—but the marriage of its distinctly modern animation approach to a very simple, determinedly old-fashioned story. There’s something almost wistful about the way that Tintin goes to the library to do research (!), and then reads vital exposition aloud for Snowy’s (i.e. the viewer’s) benefit. Quite apart from such quaint details, however, the film impresses with the sheer minimalism of its scenario. Through all the rushing to and fro from one destination to the next—whether by car, boat, or plane—the goal remains clear: Reach the Prize before the Bad Guys. Tintin is presented with a keen awareness that it is not narrative convolutions that draw the viewer into a treasure hunt, but the propulsive progression from A to B to C to X.
Perhaps, in this respect, Tintin risks some flimsiness, for it appears to have no point beyond simply existing as a rollicking action-adventure picture with a Boy Scout’s soul. However, given that such pictures are so rare, and almost never this luscious and smartly-crafted, it seems woefully hardhearted to grouse that Tintin lacks depth. Of course it lacks depth: It’s a Boy’s Own tale brought to glorious life. Other problems do weigh on Tintin here and there. The film possesses all the rhythmic hiccups that one might expect from the first of two feature-length films adapted from multiple books. (Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson will purportedly be co-directing the second Tintin film.) Moreover, Tintin never scans as a particularly rich character, given that his primary qualities are his utter fearlessness, quick-thinking, and almost super-heroic knack for wriggling out of trouble. Such characteristics make him an excellent hero for the purposes of a breezy adventure tale, but don’t lend him much personality. Of course, Tintin must be an Everylad who can appeal to any viewer who daydreams of sunken galleons and palm-studded oases. In this sense, Tintin’s earnestness and dauntless courage make him exactly the right hero for the film that bears his name. For who wouldn’t like to be so brave in the face of danger; to alternately clobber and maneuver and reason their way out of harrowing situations; and to race across the world in search of fortune and glory, all with a loyal pooch by their side?
A- - I’ve previously observed that the most gleefully gratifying aspect of Pixar’s triumph over the realms of American feature animation has been the burgeoning thematic sophistication of its films, which have evolved from wholesome entertainments into nimble and sensitive works of art. However, I’ve also long held the perhaps heretical view among Pixar aficionados that Toy Story and Toy Story 2, despite their charming qualities and seminal status in animated cinema, seem, shall we say, slighter than the later-model Pixar efforts. The first two chapters in the saga of Woody and Buzz Lightyear are unambiguously lesser films when held alongside subsequent films. Little in the first two Toy Story films compares to Ratatouille’s virtuoso storytelling, WALL●E’s sweeping sci-fi explorations, or Up’s adroit blending of giddy thrills and profound sorrow. For this reason, there is a rich sense of fulfillment to be had in Toy Story 3, quite apart from its inherent sensory and emotional pleasures. Director Lee Unkrich—here taking solo helming duties for the first time—expands the scope of the studio’s most familiar franchise to encompass delicate matters such as emotional abuse, the sting of betrayal, class-based tyranny, and the specter of mortality. Yet Toy Story 3 never loses sight of the fundamental appeal of pint-sized adventure in the perilous wilderness of suburbia, nor of the essential pathos of growing up, here handled (as always) with the utmost care. The third chapter in the Disney / Pixar behemoth reveals itself to be the best: gorgeous, intricate, a little frightening, and shamelessly touching.
B+ - For over a decade now, Dreamworks Animation has been churning out Shreks, Madagascars, and various other talking animal mediocrities (anyone remember Shark Tale?), jousting with Blue Sky Studios for a distant second-place slot behind American animation’s reigning champion, Pixar. In 2008, Dreamworks managed its first genuinely good film, Kung-Fu Panda, a charming, marvelously designed bit of fluff in the underdog sports movie mold. Lacking contemporary kiddie animation’s characteristic risible pop culture references and cheap scatological humor, Panda hinted at better things to come from the studio in terms of feature animation. And, lo and behold, here we are, two years later, and Dreamworks has delivered the exhilarating, dazzling How to Train Your Dragon, a film that should by all rights be nothing more than disposable entertainment, but attains something much finer. No doubt this is at least partly due to the men at the helm, Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, who were the minds behind that oddball late Disney Renaissance marvel Lilo & Sitch. However, it’s undeniable that Dragon feels like the progeny of a studio that has finally found its stride and resolved to aim high. The story is simple, the design breathtaking, the action rousing, and the humor mostly warm and sweet. While Dragon lacks the grace and thematic sophistication of a Pixar film, it is by any measure a damn splendid animated feature.
C+ - Any film treatment of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books must overcome a conspicuous stumbling block: How does one adapt a pair of Victorian nursery stories, consisting mainly of a succession of absurdist dialogues, into engaging cinema? A literalist, scene-by-scene recreation of the Alice tales would make for an unconventional film, but also a wearisome and distinctly un-cinematic experience. Given his gothic fairy-tale sensibilities and enduring fascination with outcasts defined by their hyperbolic physical and emotional qualities, Tim Burton would seem a comfortable fit for Carroll’s brand of amusing dementia. However, the director’s track record with big-budget adaptations has been woefully mixed, with Exhibit A in the negative column being his misguided, excruciating Planet of the Apes remake. Happily, Alice in Wonderland, while hardly the rich, cerebral adaptation that Carroll’s works deserve, proves to be a solid little adventure tale that traipses through a deliciously gratifying Burton-esque landscape. In Wonderland, the director discovers an expansive sandbox for the funhouse impulses he favors in his most inventive works. Unfortunately, Alice never remotely achieves the madcap vigor of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetle Juice, or Batman Returns (all exemplars of Burton’s vision at its most fiendish and uninhibited). The story is little more than a boilerplate Hero’s Journey, but coiled within are both the sensory splendors we expect from Burton the Fabulist, as well as some welcome jottings of subversion.
B - It’s been five years since Disney Animation Studios has produced a narrative feature that was at least partly hand-drawn, and longer than that since the venerable House of Mouse’s roughly annual doses of animated cheer could be regarded as unique cinematic events. (1999’s Tarzan being the last triumph by my reckoning.) It’s not surprising, then, that The Princess and the Frog is being trumpeted by the studio itself as a kind of overdue return to form. In the wake of forgettable computer-generated mediocrities such a Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons, there is a steely logic in Disney’s decision to abandon its anemic Pixar apings and instead pursue films created according to the template of its successful Renaissance features. Indeed, TPatF possesses all the hallmarks of the studio’s 1990s films: hand-drawn animation embellished with dazzling visual effects; Broadway-style musical storytelling; a young, appealing protagonist; goofy comic relief characters; and simplistic moral lessons. Perhaps it’s the long absence of that Disney Magic(TM)—benign, kid-friendly entertainment executed with stunning visual achievement—that makes that familiarity work so well in The Princess and the Frog. Certainly, there’s very little that’s unexpected in Ron Clements and John Musker’s Jazz Age fairy tale. However, there’s also nothing wrong with following a formula when the result is so gorgeous. Just as Pixar has established itself as preeminent purveyor of children’s fare that is thematically richer and more downright cinematic than most “adult” features, Disney Animation Studio once made unbearably lovely moving picture books, far lovelier than their often crude stories or questionable politics warranted. Perhaps the highest praise one can offer The Princess in the Frog is that it reignites that latent tradition with enthusiasm and boundless affection for its forebears.
B+ - Wes Anderson’s distinctive authorial signatures—the fussy, nostalgia-rich production design, the playful movements of his camera, the droll labeling of chapters and even shots—has at times been derided as a dollhouse aesthetic, more suited to playthings than real people. It’s not a criticism I share, but there you have it. One might say that Anderson’s latest feature, Fantastic Mr. Fox, responds to such objections by taking them at face value, as it was made using literal dolls. Well, stop-motion puppets, to be precise. A more natural fit between a particular style of animation and a living auteur would be hard to imagine, as Anderson’s propensity for treating every shot as a tableau is given its most ebullient expression yet. There’s something damn near perfect about the marriage of Mr. Fox’s old-school animation—which heartily embraces an aura of toybox unreality—to the director’s natural affinities. Anderson is an artist who thrives on meticulous attention to detail and on making every shot count, and animation provides ample opportunity to indulge such impulses.
C* - To call Spike Jonze’s bewildering, uneasy Where the Wild Things Are an “adaptation” of Maurice Sendak’s trim little bedtime story strikes me as the faultiest use of the term since David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch. While Jonze’s film co-opts Sendak’s indelible creature designs and the general thrust of his tale—a boy journeys to an untamed island, is crowned king of the resident monsters, becomes disillusioned, and returns home—it contains little else that is familiar, either from the source material or the whole history of films about children and childhood. This film is wondrous, exhausting, confused, offensive, and deeply affecting, often at the same time. Above all, it is unremittingly odd. It is without question one of the most confounding films I’ve seen in the past decade, and I’ve seen INLAND EMPIRE. The space between a film that says uncommon things in unfamiliar ways and a film that has no conception of what it is trying to say… well, that is a narrow and shadowed gap, and Where the Wild Things Are squats squarely in it. The adaptation of a beloved children’s book should be a sure-fire opportunity to churn out a crowd-pleasing mediocrity. Somehow, for reasons that only he likely understands, Jonze has refashioned Sendak’s tale into a challenging, fractured, and often frustrating work of cinema, and for that I still can’t decide whether he deserves some sort of auteur medal or a stint in the time-out corner.