Adventures of Tintin, The (Blu-ray Review)

• Reviewed by: Tim Salmons
• Review Date: Jun 11, 2012
• Format: Blu-ray Disc
• 

Review

Pleasure indeed is in store for those who have not experienced The Adventures of Tintin from Stephen Spielberg. One of the past year's bigger hits, the film sets the standard for the best motion-capture film now out there.

Even better, it really captures the flavour of Belgian author Hergé's creation of the appealingly intrepid investigator Tintin and his faithful dog Snowy and the countless action and adventure tales that the characters' many readers grew up on. The film's screenplay by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, and Joe Cornish focuses on two of the early Tintin adventures - "The Secret of the Unicorn" and "Red Rackham's Treasure". In it, Tintin (voice and motion capture performance by Jamie Bell) purchases a model of a 17th century ship that may contain the secret of the whereabouts of a treasure or maybe even the threat of a curse. Others are after the same prize(s) and Tintin soon finds the model ship stolen and himself captured by one of them - Sakharine (voice and motion capture performance by Daniel Craig) who stashes Tintin and Snowy aboard a ship bound for Morocco. The ship's boozy captain, Archibald Haddock (voice and motion capture work by Andy Serkis), is soon a reluctant Tintin ally. The film's shear atmosphere of mystery, suspense, and fun as we work our way through the story is infectious and drags us along relentlessly. The infectiousness almost makes one imagine that we have a young Spielberg at the film's helm rejoicing in his early days of filmmaking and the memories of his youth. Originally a joint Paramount and Columbia Pictures production, the film's Blu-ray release has been handled by Paramount. The 2.35:1 digital image essentially rendered entirely in the digital domain, it's no surprise that the result is superlative. Overall clarity and detail whether it be those of facial features or artifact and environmental textures are all consistently strong and the colour palette is both realistic and beautifully saturated. A 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track is a worthy audio match to the impressive video. Dialogue remains clear in all situations whether those of some aggressive action or lengthy atmospheric scenes. John Williams's enjoyable score is well rendered. 5.1 DD tracks are also provided in English, French, and Spanish as well as corresponding subtitling. The supplements include over 90 minutes of HD featurettes dealing with virtually every aspect of production. A DVD copy of the film is also included. Virtually a reference level Blu-ray release from Paramount. Highly recommended.

- Barrie Maxwell