My initial
assessment: the animation scares the crap out of me. It’s too good – as much as
you kind of get used to it, it’s very strange to see the voice actors’ facial
expressions appear on an animated character; all very impressive but highly
unsettling.
I feel like
I should come to review The Secret of the Unicorn with a thorough knowledge of
all of the Tintin stories. I certainly read them growing up and also watched
the animated series. I really love Tintin yet here I sit and I’m not actually
sure I can fully remember any of the mysteries all the way through. Possibly a
sizeable portion of my Tintin-reading has been attempting to battle through the
various French copies we had lying around the house; lots of beginnings, but
many many failures to get further than just a few pages in.
It turns
out then, that me and my family are just Tintin groupies – complete with
t-shirts, artwork, and various other bits of ‘merch’. I shall rectify this by
reading all of the Tintin books by the time the next film comes out (or at
least start them).
There’s no
point in talking about the plot. It is what it is – apparently a mish-mash of a
few stories together. There’re so many that there’s no worry about wasting them
so why not take the best bits of several? It’s a nice little mystery and sets
everything up neatly – we meet Captain Haddock for the first time and learn
that he’s a little bit of a drunk. We hear ‘thundering typhoons!’ and
‘blistering barnacles!’ a suitable number of times and we see just enough of
Thompson and Thompson. I have no problem with any of that. What I do have a
problem with is the 3D.
Now, I
didn’t watch The Secret of the Unicorn in 3D. It’s a year since it was out in
the cinema so I, naturally, watched it at home on my TV. So a lot of effort has
gone into making this film look amazing in 3D with the swooping camera angles
and zippy market scenes but all of that was lost on me, and will be on everyone
for ever unless you’re very posh and own a 3D TV. What remained were very
glaring attempts at wowing a cinema audience and that, along with the high
quality animation, made the whole thing feel a lot like a video game -
specifically like Unchartered 2. You could actually split the film up into
different levels on the game as you’re watching it – flying the plane, driving
the car down the very busy road, being Snowy in the bit with the cows. That
reminds me, Snowy is horribly under-utilised.
So if the
3D let the film down a bit (ironic really), it was completely raised up again
by the voices. Maybe it’s a nice contrast given that I’d saw Skyfall for the
second time the night before but I think Daniel Craig makes a very good
bad-guy. He should really do that more often! Simon Pegg and Nick Frost do
Thompson and Thompson very well (although you can’t really tell it’s them) and
the king of crazy-good animation Andy Serkis was always going to be fantastic
as Captain Haddock. I thought Jamie Bell as Tintin was only OK though, which is
a shame given that he hasn’t done much of note since Billy Elliot (I must
remember to watch The Eagle).
With
possibly the most shameless and blatant sequel set-up I’ve ever seen (and that
includes the second Pirates film) there’s a confidence with The Secret of the Unicorn
that only someone with Spielberg’s ego could manage. Being of such a different
style to the original comics they couldn’t really rely on hardcore Tintin fans
to love it, and if it had fallen on its face and no sequel happened they would
have looked frankly ridiculous. As it is, Peter Jackson is directing Tintin 2
so they’re ok, and I think it has a fighting chance of being a good film in its
own right. There’ll need to be a lot of reminders of the plot though or it’ll
be one of those franchises where you really need to watch the first film before
embarking on any of the others. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or
not.
I hope the
title will be less misleading in the second film. I was terribly disappointed
by the dearth of unicorns in this one.
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