The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

Much as "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" was my most anticipated film of 2012, so was "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" my most anticipated film of 2013. While the first film was plagued by some substantial pacing issues and overindulgence of stuff that really should have been saved for the inevitable directors cut, I found it to be a fun ride that managed to open the floodgates to memories from my childhood. The second entry was set to absolutely blow the roof off the theater, promising some of the more memorable sequences from the book and introducing the greatest dragon in fantasy literature. Needless to say I was stoked beyond words.

Perhaps too much so, in all honesty. After a year of waiting impatiently, the film is now finally out, and I can't help but feel conflicted over my thoughts on it. Much like the first film, I can't say with a straight face that "The Desolation of Smaug" is a great movie. It suffers from the same problem that the first one had, which is that it's too damn long for no good reason, being padded out by the stuff from the appendices that was not in the original book, which slows the pace down like a drag-chute on occasion.

On the other hand, it's "The Hobbit," so I was still entertained. And to be fair, this is a much faster-paced, rousing, action-packed film that manages to be quite thrilling on more than a number of occasions, and the things that they do right is done very, very, very well. There are moments that are straight up sublime in how accurately they convey the wonderment and adventure from the book. The nerd in me had a very good time, particularly in the first half which follows Bilbo and the dwarfs through Mirkwood, providing the best action in the movie. What can I say? I'm a mark for this crap.

I was singing "The Greatest Adventure" in my head SO HARD at this.

It was when the group reaches Laketown and then Erebor itself that I found myself getting slightly off-put by some things which were not as present in the first film, those being the liberties taken with the story and characters. Some of them are worse than others. Now are any of them enough to make me say that the movie is bad? No, but as a die-hard fan since I was a child, I feel within my rights to objectively and calmly say that I don't think these changes were for the better, they are ultimately pointless, and they reek of studio interference, which I would like to believe that Peter Jackson would be above by this point.

"The Desolation of Smaug" follows Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and company through the forests of Mirkwood and the spiders, escaping the Wood Elves and Legolas (Orlando Bloom), down the river to Laketown, reaching The Lonely Mountain and confronting Smaug himself before ending with a cliffhanger that will no doubt be horrendously frustrating for anybody who hasn't read the book. Throughout the affair they are being chased by Azog and his orcs, who show up every once in a while to inject action scenes where there were none previously. That works I suppose, and does tend to heighten the sense of urgency, but it still smacks slightly of superfluous.

He's kind of the Gilgamesh to the Necromancer's Exdeath.

New additions to the cast include Bard (Luke Evans), a man of Laketown who doesn't seem nearly as badass as he should considering what he manages to accomplish later, and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), a wood elf who actually does manage to be a total badass when she's not stuck in a non-canonical and shockingly out-of-place love triangle between her, Legolas and the dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner). While I'm not a huge fan of Evangeline I do think she does a great job here, and is one of the more hardcore characters, which makes it a shame that they thought that they needed to subject her to a cliched and meaningless romantic angle. Luke Evans on the other was just acceptable. He was kind of bland, he didn't really sell me on the character of Bard, and he looks way too much like Orlando Bloom. At first I legitimately thought they put a different wig on Bloom and cast him twice. In fact, the exact same thing happened to me and "The Three Musketeers," which also stared him and Evans. They really need to stop casting them together. It's distracting.

But we're all here to see a dragon, right? And true to my hopes and expectations, once he rises from his massive pile of gold, Smaug did not disappoint. He is sufficiently awesome and scary looking, and Benedict Cumberbatch provides a deep, mountainous rumble of a voice that conveys his power and savagery. I still prefer Richard Boone's portrayal in the animated version, but Cumberbatch is arguably the highlight of the film, as he is in roughly everything that he's in. And while the pacing is different than the source material, much like Gollum and Bilbo's scene in the first film, the famous conversation between Smaug and Bilbo is just as awesome as I was hoping it was going to be. Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch play so well off of each other that its difficult to imagine anyone else doing it.

The issue I had with Smaug wasn't his portrayal, although he is oddly unobservant on a number of occasions, but the situation that they put him in. Not content with keeping the encounter with the dragon a game of wits and hiding between him and Bilbo, the film unexpectedly pauses the scene about two sentences before it would have normally ended, and decides to inject Thorin and the dwarfs into the situation. This leads to an extended action sequence that finds the dwarfs running around Erebor trying to defeat Smaug in a Boss Battle straight out of a video game. The problem is that literally nothing is accomplished by it. After it's done, Smaug simply picks up the conversation he was having with Bilbo half an hour previously, finishes the thought he had been having, and then flies away. And absolutely nothing had changed. It was as if our regularly scheduled program had been interrupted to bring us an unrelated action scene seconds before it was over.

"Hey. HEY. I'm way too good looking to not get an extended action sequence where I stand on a dragon's head."

I wouldn't have as big a problem with it had the scene accomplished something. But by its very nature it HAS to be pointless because the dwarfs don't defeat Smaug. The dragon flies away to attack Laketown, and there's nothing the movie can do about that. Nothing the dwarfs do there can amount to anything. So why even have them there? Was the movie not long enough? Maybe they wanted to end on a bang, but I tell you what, maybe instead of closing the film with a half hour long fight which is completely meaningless, you could have used that half hour to instead stick an action sequence that actually was in the book in there, and ended the film with Smaug attacking the city. And hey presto, the film would have actually had something close to an ending, too. I can see why they did what they did, but I really don't see the point.

I also feel it necessary to point out that despite the heroics of Thorin and company during the fight with Smaug, in the end, their plan was completely stupid. I'm no Tolkien scholar, and I don't know everything about dragons in that universe, but I am a fairly big nerd. And being a big nerd I must point out that if one desires to kill a dragon - an ancient fire-breathing red dragon - perhaps a strategy involving massive heat is not the way to go. I'm just saying that if your plan to kill a red dragon involves using its own fire to heat something else up which you will then use to attack it, therefore by extension ensuring that at absolute most, the fire will be no hotter than what its own body naturally produces, you have no idea how dragons work and have no business fighting them. And what do you know? We go through half an hour setting up this elaborate scheme, and in the end it does nothing except to mildly irritate Smaug before he walks it off and leaves, which makes less sense now because after all that B.S. they just put him through he'd probably stick around and eat all of them out of pure annoyance.

And maybe I'm being nitpicky...but why in the name of Gandalf's beard does Bilbo take off the ring while talking to Smaug? THAT. MAKES. NO. SENSE.

All that aside, there's still enough to call this a fun time. It's definitely got some fantastic action in it, which really saves it from many of its problems, but I am getting a little irritated at the persistent unnecessary padding this trilogy seems hard-set on subjecting us to. I'm sure we're going to get more of that come next December, as well. But "The Hobbit" is still "The Hobbit," and I can't help but be entertained. I just can't believe that my vision for the extended cut is actually shorter. Who would have thought?

OH MY GOD THIS TRAILER.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "The Desolation of Smaug" is better than "An Unexpected Journey" due to rampant action, a much faster pace, and Smaug The Most Terrible of Calamities. However, it's still too long and there are some weird additions that annoy and some pointless action that is shockingly distracting, at least to me. It's mostly nerdy nit-picking, to be fair, but it's enough to make me feel ever so slightly let down. But it'll probably get better with rewatching, and it's still Tolkien. I'd still rather watch "The Hobbit" cartoon any day, though.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Well, this is it. This is the big one, Elizabeth. In a year containing new entries for the Batman, Bond and "Alien" franchises, all things I'm a huge fan of, there was still no film I was more looking forward to in 2012 than Peter Jackson's return to Middle Earth for the first part of "The Hobbit." And while the fact that the movies proceeding it were freaking amazing was a definite contributor in most people's level of excitement, for myself it was a far more personal thing to see this book brought to the big screen.

I read "The Lord of The Rings" when I was in 5th grade. I can't imagine that I fully comprehended everything in it at that point, but I still remember sitting at my desk waiting for science class to begin with "The Fellowship of The Ring" in my hands, trying to keep track of the lineage of Elven Kings before deciding I didn't care and it probably didn't matter too much. I remember Boromir died in study hall. That was a bummer. Even before Sean Bean was cast in the role I liked him.

Of course before you read "The Lord of The Rings," there's another book that came before it that you should read first. And like any chronologically inclined individual, I read "The Hobbit" before tackling the Big Three, and it become my favorite book. I can't remember how many times I read it, but I read it a lot. But even more important to me was a film I can say without hyperbole that I've probably seen close to 300 times.

Pictured above - My childhood.

The 1977 Rankin/Bass production of "The Hobbit" was my favorite movie. Hands down, no contest, my favorite movie ever. I had it on BETA, and it's a credit to the hardiness of those old tapes that it held up as well as it did, because any lesser piece of hardware would have melted under the constant running that I subjected it to. I've had cars that have died under less wear and tear. It most have been an every other day thing with me. I would get home from school, have a snack, throw on "The Hobbit," and then proceed with whatever else I was doing. But knowing me my eyes were probably glued to the screen a vast majority of the time.

Looking back I think it's a film that still holds up today, as it is quite good at telling that fantastic story in a very faithful and fast paced way, with some occasionally good animation, fun characters and some very good acting, particularly from the great John Huston as Gandalf. But it was Richard Boone as Smaug who stole the show, creating what is one of the most badass villains in movie history. Just look on Youtube for Bilbo's scene with Smaug. It's one of the best conversations in fantasy film, and Boone's performance still sends chills down my spine.

"Revenge? You?! HA! I am SMAUG!"

Skip ahead some 30 years and Peter Jackson tries his hand at "The Hobbit." This was an unusual case for me, because while I normally hesitate to raise expectations too high in fear that they will not be fulfilled, I wholeheartedly went into "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" with hopes as high as the peak of Erebor itself. I did this under the logical realization that no matter what, there was only a .5% chance that I wasn't going to like this film.

I reasoned that even if it were too drawn out and overly long, as the complaints leaking before its release had implied it was, the worst case scenario is that you're getting more "Lord of The Rings." Therefore it's kind of impossible for it to be bad. Does that make sense? It's like complaining that the chocolate cake buffet has far too much chocolate cake in it.

"THE GREAT GOBLIN DEMANDS CHERRY!!!"

What ended up happening was that the first part of "The Hobbit" was indeed what complainers had made it out to be. It was too long by at least an hour, as it contained more padding than Derek Small's trousers. And if I were making the choice it's clear that the story of "The Hobbit" would have been better served as two films as opposed to another trilogy. The aspects drawn from Tolkien's appendices to extend the run time felt tacked on, dragged down the pace, and felt slightly dull at best. There were 20 minute stretches of runtime and entire characters that could have been cut from this film, which would probably have made it a much better movie.

All that is true. All of those complaints are valid, and I would not argue against anyone who said that they found this film to be plodding, and I would completely understand if they didn't like it. This is without question the weakest of Peter Jackson's adaptations of Tolkien's works, and for all of its technical grandeur spends a lot of time spinning its wheels in the mud.

Oh look. It's the scene where Gandalf plays with his Galadriel action figure.

And all that being said, I still liked it. I mean, come on. It's "The Hobbit." I said there was a .5% chance I wouldn't like it. I wasn't lying. Even with all of its faults, this is still a fantastically fun time which will, I believe, get better once the other films are released to give it context and the resolution it lacks.

While "An Unexpected Journey" doesn't have the epic scope of "Lord of The Rings," being a smaller story without the dire threat of Sauron looming, Peter Jackson has changed nothing about the tone and the feel of discovery and high adventure prevalent throughout. It's actually quite light hearted in contrast, as the dourness of characters like Aragorn, Legolas and Boromir have been relegated to one person now: Thorin Oakenshield, leader of the dwarves.

"I shall carry the buzzkill for us all."

I must admit to not being entirely on board with the character design of Thorin, as I think he looks too young and clean, but Richard Armitage does aptly portray him with the wounded pride and prickly nature that made him such a memorable character in the book. Although I wouldn't mind seeing his whole "I am completely wrong about nearly everything and I'm a total jerk but refuse to admit it" thing come to more light in the next installments, because that's the other thing about him that's a significant character trait. And we really didn't get that in the first film. Then again, that outright abuse of Bilbo by the dwarves doesn't come till later.

Speaking of Bilbo, I absolutely loved Martin Freeman as our own Mr. Baggins. Not only is he a dead ringer for a young Ian Holm, but he's also charming, funny, naive, and just plain fun to watch. And while some may look at him and see a lot of Elijah Woods' Frodo in the performance, Bilbo is, to me at least, a more interesting character because while Frodo had to be strong mentally to take the ring to Mordor, it was the actions of those around him that carried him through to his journey's end. In "The Hobbit," it's Bilbo who is the real hero of the story, and ends up saving the dwarves at nearly every turn, even if it is sometimes subtle and unappreciated. In "The Hobbit" it's the reluctant, on the outside least useful member of the party who ends up being the most important, and that's a cool dynamic.

And he makes the sandwiches.

Ian McKellen is of course amazing as Gandalf, and I for one am happy that this entire trilogy will feature Gandalf the Grey as opposed to the more serious Gandalf the White. He's just more fun when he's kind of loopy. The dwarves were also great fun, especially Graham McTavish's badass Dwalin and Ken Scott's wiser Balin, who gives a lot of our exposition. And of course Fili (Dean O'Gorman) and Kili (Aidan Turner) were memorable as the youngest members of the group. Although seeing dwarves without beards is an odd, odd thing. Particularly when they're described as having the longest beards of the company in the book. Whatever.

The guy who nearly runs away with the entire film, however, is Andy Serkis. I thought his turn as Gollum, particularly in "Return of The King" should have been up for an Oscar, and he once again reminded us in this film why that is. It's safe to say that there is no better motion capture actor today than him. What's amazing is that on top of also being an incredible voice actor, Andy Serkis is a phenomenal dramatic actor as well, something you have to be in order to bring across performances in his characters like he does. And amazingly, Gollum looks even better than he did before, and his performance is even better conveyed.

And he's funnier, too.

Another good thing is that his appearance heralds the end of the lull that occupies the middle of this film. I don't know why it is that Rivendell seems to be the place movies go to become boring, but man that seems consistent. There is what seems to be about a 30 minute stretch of time, after the famous encounter with the trolls, that really pulls the ripcord on the pace. And the biggest reason for that is because that is when the film starts to consistently leave the viewpoint of Bilbo, our hero, and starts filling in extraneous goings on outside the adventure at hand, which is the biggest sticking point of this movie.

This is where most of the film's missteps rear their heads to really throw off the pacing. The inclusion of Azog the Defiler as a main antagonist is fine (even if it's not what went down in the book it still makes sense), but when Radagast the Brown shows up out of the flipping blue to completely throw a wrench into the pace of the narrative is when the film first starts feeling a tad bloated.

You know, not many people can pull off the "Dried Bird Poo On My Face" look. Props.

See, here's the thing. It's true that even though we didn't see it in the book, when Gandalf left the party for a time, he was down south with Radagast fighting a dude called The Necromancer. And yes, it's true that it did turn out to be Sauron. And that's important to "Lord of The Rings." Kind of. Well, not really since we're simply told at the beginning of those films that Sauron "is returned" and that's the extent of it with nary a mention of The Necromancer to be found. But it's not really important to the story at hand in this film, is it? I can tell you that the quest for Erebor is not affected by The Necromancer in any appreciable way besides drawing Gandalf away from the party for a good chunk of the book.

And again, it's leaving the viewpoint of our hero, making him seem less important even though this is a story about him. I mean, yeah it's true that technically everything we're seeing is legit cannon, but in the end, shouldn't it be more about making a cohesive narrative rather than cramming in as much as possible and damn the consequences? Can we assume there was a reason it wasn't in the book to begin with, since the whole book is told from Biblo's perspective?

I just don't like Radagast. I think that's what it boils down to. I don't like the character, I don't like Sylvester McCoy's portrayal of him, and I don't like the fact that all his actions self-fulfill their own importance. And finally I don't like the fact that he tacks on twenty minutes to a movie that was already in dire need of some trimming around the midsection.

"Ladies..."

Why on Middle Earth is this film nearly 3 hours long? The decision to split it into 3 films I get. While that may be excessive, it's doable. But take all the superfluous stuff with Radagast and Azog and talks about The Necromancer out and you've probably cleared out nearly forty minutes of stuff we didn't need to see. And guess what? That would put "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" a tad over 2 hours long. Gosh. That sounds like a reasonable run time right there. And you've covered the same amount of story. And it'd be a faster paced film with a far more cohesive narrative.

You know what it is like? It's like the theatrical cut of this film is actually the extended 3.5 hour cut that would come with 4 DVDs and a snazzy collectors box. This is like the version of the film that me and the rest of the nerds would go out and buy the day it came out and watch endlessly while discussing how it was awesome because it fleshed out the story so much more, but we totally understood why it didn't make the final cut. I shudder to think what scenes were deleted from "An Unexpected Journey," because it feels like I've already seen all of them. I don't know if I'd actually want to watch the extended cut.

No, that's a lie. I'd buy it. I'd buy it hard.

One final thing I need to address is the issue of 48 frames per second. The first time I saw this film, I saw in it standard 24 fps. It was fine. It looked like a "Lord of The Rings" movie. The second time I saw the 3D HFR version that apparently is going to reinvent film and is going to be the new standard henceforth. My impression?

Stop. They need to stop that right the hell now. It looked terrible, and I can't see it taking off. People will, and rightly should, hate this 48 fps crap, and Peter Jackson and everyone else is insane if they think it makes their movie look better. IN. SANE.

I should put in a caveat that the things in front of the camera that were real looked terrible. The things that weren't real looked fantastic. The 3D in particular was actually the best I've ever seen, and I give that credit almost exclusively to the 48 fps. I still think 3D is a tired gimmick that needs to stop, but still, the 3D was very good. I would use 48 fps strictly for fully animated films. That would be awesome. But movies with real people in front of a camera? No way.

Just imagine this...but have a cardboard cutout tree, a painted background and a wardrobe bought from Halloween USA. That's the effect the 48 fps goes for.

The problem is that 48 fps makes "An Unexpected Journey" look like the most lavish, big budget made for TV movie ever produced. It looks cheap. It doesn't look like a film. It looks like the SciFi Channel finally knocked one out of the park. I can't describe to you in how many ways that is distracting. And it's not like you won't suffer for long. This movie is almost 3 hours. And that's 3 hours of feeling like you just spent $14 to watch a TV movie. Had my buddy I was seeing it with not been seeing it for the first time, I would have politely asked for a refund and bought a cheaper ticket to another showing of the superior 24 fps version. Yeah, it's that bad, and there's no way in Mordor I'm watching the other two films, or any other movie in 48 fps. Hell no. I refuse to support that.

For all its flaws, "An Unexpected Journey" was still a fun time. It was fated to be the weakest link being the first part of a trilogy, as is usually the case when a trilogy is always planned from the start, but it still performed admirably enough. In that way it's quite easy to compare it to "Fellowship of The Ring," even though the later is unquestionably the better movie. But much like "Fellowship," if there was one thing this movie did well it was to set up what is to come later. And based on what is ahead in the story, "The Desolation of Smaug" is going to kick so much ass that we'll have to import it from other countries.

Looks like this trilogy is staying at the top of my "Most Anticipated" list for 2013 and 2014.

"Ladies..."

THE BOTTOM LINE - Despite all its problems, and it had its fair share, "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" was still a fun, nostalgic adventure that overstepped its bounds a bit in terms of scale. But it was still fun, particularly the last hour which was thrilling as hell. Yeah, it starts off a little slow, and the middle has its speedbumps, but once Gollum shows up that movie is ON till the credits roll. I am reasonably pleased with it and am beyond excited for what's to come. Smaug equals happy Pat.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

::sigh::

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.

"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.