The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (Steven Spielberg, 2011)

Much panned by Hergé aficionados for the cardinal sin of not being the comic books of their childhood, Spielberg's effort is actually a rather successful one until the plot settles into a sanitised Raiders of the Lost Ark non-stop chase groove, complete with motorcycle sidecars and Arabic markets to trash. The motion capture is fluid and the renditions of the characters' faces nicely perched halfway between their cartoon versions and real people, with a painstaking amount of attention paid to incidental period details and object textures around them as well. The dialogue, the fruit of the loving labours of the Moffat/Wright/Cornish partnership, is also crisp and humorous in the fashion of the books, supported by solid voice casting, Andy Serkis's Captain Haddock being a particular treat. If it feels lacking in substance, this is probably just because you haven't read the books since you were 11 years old.

6/10