Tintin joins forces with comical Captain Haddock in Steven Spielberg’s visually enchanting mix of 3-D and motion-capture technologies. The resulting film ranks with “Avatar” as one of the best examples of the form. (WETA Digital Ltd.)
I had my doubts about Steven Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin,’’ the director’s maiden effort working with 3-D and motion capture, two processes that, badly used, have yielded many unhappy hours of moviegoing for me in recent years.
And then there’s the source material, introduced to me by a Franco-American girlfriend back in the ’70s: a series of comic-book adventures, going back to 1929, that seemed quaint when they weren’t outright racist.
I wasn’t a fan then, but Spielberg and an army of collaborators — deploying motion capture and 3-D more skillfully than in any film since “Avatar’’ — turn this unlikely material into one of the year’s most pleasurable, family-friendly experiences, a grand thrill ride of a treasure hunt.
Thankfully, “Tintin’’ is Spielberg at his most playful and unpretentious — a description I certainly wouldn’t apply to the director’s other film this week, the Oscar-mongering “War Horse.’’
In entertainer mode for “Tintin,’’ Spielberg offers a simple, classic adventure yarn, cleanly and expertly told, with all the trimmings. And brings it in at just over 90 minutes before the lengthy credits, something that should serve as an example to the people who keep cranking out those bloated “Pirates of the Caribbean’’ movies.
For those unfamiliar with Tintin — a beloved mainstream character outside the United States, where he has a cult following at best — he’s a young Belgian reporter who pursues a long string of globe-trotting adventures with his faithful terrier, Snowy.
Tintin is voiced by Jamie Bell (“Billy Elliot”), who — like the other lead performers — acted out scenes, with his movements captured using dozens of sensors arrayed on his body. Animators turn this into something between animation and live-action.
Done badly, this technique produces horrors with dead-eyed characters, such as in “The Polar Express’’ and “Mars Needs Moms.’’ Practiced with subtlety and, yes, artistry, you get the likes of “Avatar’’ and “Tintin.’’
It’s about 1940, and Tintin buys an elaborate model of a sailing schooner that is quickly stolen by a bad guy named Sakharine (Daniel Craig, whose character, modeled closely on Hergé’s original drawings, looks a lot like Spielberg himself).
Sakharine is pursuing a priceless treasure that went down on the real schooner — sent to the bottom of the sea centuries earlier by a pirate ancestor. Tintin begins to investigate, teaming up with a descendant of that schooner’s captain — the perpetually intoxicated Captain Haddock.
Haddock is performed, in a hilarious tour de force, by the Laurence Olivier of motion-capture actors, Andy Serkis — who also brought Gollum of the “Lord of the Rings” movies and Caesar of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes’’ to vivid life.
This may be Spielberg’s funniest film, and it reaches a comic summit when Haddock gives new meaning to the expression “running on fumes’’ during a biplane flight. He, Tintin and Snowy are pursuing Sakharine to a Middle Eastern kingdom where a crystal-shattering opera singer plays a crucial role in his plot.
Spielberg could have made this a live-action film, but motion-capture allows for amazingly long and complex camera movements that amaze, amuse and (unlike the gratuitous tracking shots in “Hugo’’) move the story propulsively along.
“Tintin’’ climaxes with a battle involving a pair of construction cranes that no real-life stunt man would ever consider — it simply has to be seen to be believed. And it ends with the promise of a second installment directed by Peter Jackson, who served as co-producer and second unit director on this one.
Personally, I can’t wait.