I remember when Steven Spielberg used to be awesome. Do you? "Jurassic Park?" "Hook?" "Saving Private Ryan?" "Jaws?" "Schindler's List?" "Raiders of The Lost Ark?" Good times.
Now he seems to be a parody of himself. The soul seems to have been sucked out of his work now. Between "A.I." and "Minority Report", "War of The Worlds," "Warhorse" and most (not me) would say "Kingdom of The Crystal Skull" it seems like you could replace Spielberg with a robot at this point and not notice much difference. To be fair, he has always, and will always have an amazing eye for incredible visuals. The man knows what he's doing, not doubt, but his films seemed to be more heartfelt before. Now it seems he's making movies because that's what he's supposed to do.
Then again, it's amazing he has time to direct anything in between all the movies he produces. I mean, just take a look at the number of things Spielberg has produced on his IMDB page. It's over 100, and a third of them seem to be in the last 5 years. It's insane.
"The Adventures of Tintin" looked like another Spielberg movie that felt very safe and formulaic, and it was. Don't kid yourself - even with all the flashy visuals and action and explosions, this is a kid's movie. Not that there's anything wrong with that by its nature, but I know Spielberg can make good movies, and I feel this kids fluff is tremendously beneath him.
Kids will love this stuff, though. Undoubtedly they will. I cannot take that away from the movie. In those terms, "The Adventures of Tintin" does exactly what it set out to do, and succeeded quite well. There's lots of shiny things to look at, lots of swinging around on stuff, lots of prat-falls and a drunk guy acting really silly because drunk people are hilarious and not to be pitied. In fact, the captain being drunk quite literally saves the day on more than one occasion, and the heroes literally could not have been successful in their endeavors had the captain not been a hopeless lush.
I'll let you draw your own conclusions and thoughts from that.
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| "Please, Captain. I know your liver is the size of a boogie board and the consistency of a used grease rag, but for the good of the plot and sake of the world, we need you to shotgun that last sixer of Pabst... |
So it's a kids movie. Whatever. That's fine. I'll stop griping about it, with the exception of one last thing that just irritated the crap out of me: Tintin speaking his interior monologues and doing the detective work in his head out loud. This...was nails on a chalk-board for me.
Just so you know what I'm talking about, every time Tintin is thinking about something...ANYTHING, he has to work it out in his head, so he does so out loud. Now this is obviously a hold over from its origins as a comic strip, where there were limited ways of showing what he was thinking, but when it's in a movie it just comes off as obnoxious and honestly making Tintin look like he needs some mental help because he seriously looks like a crazy person rambling to himself about nonsense. But how else could they possibly get plot exposition out there for all us dummies in the audience?
Oh right. He could just think it. Naturally.
He's basically this guy.
What blew my mind watching the opening credits (which admittedly were quite well done) was the cast that has been assembled here. Jamie Bell is the lead, but it also has Daniel Craig, the amazing Andy Serkis, freaking Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, Mackenzie Crook (the pirate with the wooden eye in "Pirates of The Carribean"), and Toby Jones! It's produced by Peter Jackson and the screenplay was co-written by Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, who are some of my favorite people making movies right now.
Holy. Crap. That's an awesome amount of talent. And to be fair, once again giving credit where credit is due, the cast does do a good job.
Of course, you can't really see them. You see, "The Adventures of Tintin" is CG. Why? I have no idea. It's filmed like a normal, traditional movie. Yes, there are stunts going on that are pretty outrageous but it's not like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," where these things couldn't exist in anything other than animated form. These are all people, and they are made to look fairly realistic, at least as much as the style of the characters can look realistic. It's actually kind of creepy, however. Some things should not be seen in realistic rendering.
What this ends up doing is giving a sense that there was no reason at all for this movie to be CG. Cast it in live-action and it would have still worked. The character models are already made to look a bit like their real-life counterparts. What's the big deal? There was nothing to justify it not being live-action. Heck, it might have made it better in making it not so cartoony and kid-oriented. Or maybe it's because I just want to see one movie where I get to see Andy Serkis' face!
I shall leave on this one final note of rage, because despite the fact that overall, I found "The Adventures of Tintin" to be kind of boring and annoying, there was one thing that legitimately made me mad. The rest of it was just kind of forgettable, but the one thing I can't overlook is the absolute waste of an incredible talent: Cary Elwes.
You see this guy? Right up there? Yeah. He's the man. What? Don't recognize him?
How about now?
Yeah that's what I thought. Cary Elwes is the bomb, and one of my favorite actors. I was so excited when his name appeared in the opening credits. He was listed as "Pilot" on IMDB, which I also had up and running, so I knew when a plane appeared, I would see him.
Well, the plane finally appeared! It gets shot down, and has to make a water landing. Oh man! He's getting out of the plane! He's gonna say something! Ok, he said something! What was it? Was that a French accent? Ok, they're near Morocco, that makes sense. Was that Cary? It sounded like him. Ok, now he's captured. They gonna make him talk? Is Cary gonna get to be all defiant and snooty? Wait, why isn't he saying anything? Why is he in the back of the plane just sitting there? It's been like 10 minutes, why hasn't he had another line? Ok so he's parachuting out of the plane now. And he's gone. Are we going to follow him? What happened to him?
::an hour later...credits roll::
HE NEVER COMES BACK?! WHY DID CARY ELWES ONLY GET ONE GOD DAMN LINE?!?!
One line. I couldn't believe it. You get freaking Westley from "Princess Bride" in your movie and you give him ONE LINE?!?! What's the damn point? How much did he get paid for that? He could have done that role on his lunch break! Wait, screw that. He could have done it in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee! WAIT, SCREW THAT! He could have done it in the time it takes for him to take a leak!!!
That blatant waste of incredible talent was by far the most upsetting thing to me in this otherwise lukewarm outing, and will probably be the thing I remember most about it, because of the shear incredulous nature of my reaction.
Inconceivable.
Joo kip using dat word...
THE BOTTOM LINE - "The Adventures of Tintin" doesn't suck. But it's a kids movie, and I'm just not interested in that. If you have kids, they'll have a blast, and you won't want to stab yourself in the jugular just to stop the pain, because it's not bad. But I have better things to do with my time. I just don't care, and I want Spielberg to make a movie that floors me again. Is that so much to ask? Recommended, I guess.
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