The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn

The film is based on three instalments from a series of comics (these days we call them “graphic novels”) written between 1929 and 1976. The three books, namely The Crab with the Golden Claws (1941), The Secret of the Unicorn (1943), and Red Rackham’s Treasure (1944) were written during the Nazi occupation of Belgium by Georges Rémi, otherwise known as Hergé.

While Jamie Bell’s portrayal of Tintin is both endearing and memorable, Andy Serkis (who was Smeagol/Gollum in Lord of the Rings and various other motion captured creatures) never fails to entertain in his role as the alcoholic Captain Haddock. The Captain was based loosely on Herge’s temperamental colourist E.P. Jacobs and  Bob de Moor, another Belgian comics illustrator, and was known for being the creator of the curse, “billions of bilous blue blistering barnacles” and other equally creative swear words (‘jellyfish‘, ‘troglodyte‘ and ‘ectoplasm‘). The reason behind Haddock’s colourful vocabulary was simple, Herge’s comics were targeted at children, and he couldn’t fully illustrate a salty sea captain’s lack of manners and penchant for expletives without creating a few insults of his own:

• Dictatorial duck-billed diplodocus!
• Pithecanthropuses! (Genus of now extinct primitive humanoids with small skulls and apelike faces)
• Moth-eaten marmot! (A relative of the woodchuck, thick-bodied short-legged rodents)
• Anamorphic aardvark!

And so on.

Vocab aside, the movie is a gorgeous CG effects party with the best water and sand effects I’ve seen so far (courtesy of the geniuses at WETA) and wraps everything together with a compelling story, great character acting and beautifully orchestrated action sequences reminiscent of Spielberg’s early Indiana Jones adventures.

Watch it while it’s still in theatres!