Friday, November 25, 2011

Early Review of The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn- Spielberg (Come on… fine: 'Saving Private Ryan', 'Schindler's List', 'Jaws', etc)/ Jackson ('The Hobbit', 'Lord of the Rings Trilogy', 'Dead Alive', etc.)/ Wright ('Scott Pilgrim vs. the World', 'Shaun of the Dead', 'Hot Fuzz') all working on one film. It's a dream come true for any film aficionado. But… sadly it didn't reach my expectations. To be fair to the people behind it, it really is a great film. It's the 'Indiana Jones' comeback we wish we could have had. Only, I had it pegged for the best movie this year and it surely isn't that. It's one of those odd circumstances where every element of the film analyzed on its own is either "good" or "perfect", but put together only averages a "pretty good" in my mind. Spielberg's direction is perfect, Weta Digital's animation is beautiful, the performances by Andy Serkis, Jamie Bell, and Daniel Craig are thoroughly fun, and the script from Steven Moffat ('Doctor Who', anyone?), Edgar Wright, & Joe Cornish (the exceptionally entertaining 'Attack the Block') is fairly solid (even though lacking the comedy and character development I would expect from someone like Wright) for the first of what is proposed as a trilogy. Of course, I enjoyed the movie. But I was disappointed. Let down. Maybe the sequels will be better. This was supposed to be the best film of 2011, but now I'm thinking it won't even win best animation film at the academy awards. But then again, we'll see. After all, its main competition is 'Cars 2' at the moment.



- Jeff Bassin