A little disappointed by this one. It was definitely solid, but lacking in some areas as well. I'll start off by saying I enjoyed the style of animation - I was worried I'd be put off by the Zemeckishness, but the motion capturing, art style, and slightly exaggerated animations really set it apart. Granted, I did find it a little odd how big their heads were (or how small their bodies were?) at times, and something about Haddock just seemed a little off to me. I think his eyes were too small. However, I was surprised at how much I like realistic-looking Snowy. They really helped bring him into the more cartoonish world through his actions. Also worth mentioning that I loved how they introduced Tintin with Herge and his portraits. Very smart and classy way to bridge that gap.
With all that said, this movie should be retitled from The Adventures of Tintin to The Redeption of Haddock, because for whatever damn reason, he's the only character who's given any kind of arch in this movie and I don't know why that is. It's the definite weak point of the entire film - this is the first movie in the potential franchise, and Tintin is just completely glazed over for whatever reason. The only reason he seems to be there is to "write a story", but that's such a backburner reason for his existence, that it makes it so hard to latch onto his importance. Haddock, on the other hand, has huge character flaws, a rich backstory, personal investment and motivation in the story's events... pretty much everything you'd want in a protagonist.
I'll state for the record that I read pretty much every Tintin book ever released when I was a kid, so I know that Tintin never really had much of a backstory to begin with, but I wasn't able to buy that as an excuse not to give him one here. Maybe it's just because I'm smarter than a kid now, I don't know.
Regardless, look at the protagonist for pretty much any Pixar film over the past decade and you'll find personal investment in pretty much every protagonist. Wasn't the case in this film.
That said, I still found it enjoyable, partially due to the excellent action. That
was f'ing incredible. It's one of those things that you watch and think "THIS is one of the advantages that animation gives us, and yet we're almost never given it."
I'll laugh at anyone who thinks this should come anywhere close to movie of the year, but I'd definitely accept the argument that it should be in the best animation category tomorrow.
