I feel like instead of Steven Spielberg, we now have “The Steven Spielberg Experience”, like Beatlemania or Elvis impersonators. There are two perfectly good films with his name on them out right now, and yet, well, this clearly isn’t his best work and it’s darn derivative of something superior.
Yes, derivative is exactly the word I’m looking for as I describe The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones Tintin. Not unlike Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tintin is a throwback to the serial era of cliffhangers and the combination of well-defined roles/poorly-defined characters. It wastes no time getting into the action. Within seconds of the word “go,” we already have a hero, a villain, a mystery and a shooting. 12-year-old Tintin (Jamie Bell), er, I mean, clearly adult-who-holds-down-reasonable-job Tintin buys a ship in a bottle-less bottle from a local flea market. Immediately, two separate hawks descend to liberate Tintin of his purchase. There’s a humorous 
moment when the second hawks offers, “name your price,” the original vendor, a wizened old man, complains, “ten years I’ve been selling bric-a-brac and I miss ‘name your price’ by one minute.” That’ll teach you not to look old in a Spielberg film.
The toy boat is The Unicorn, a model of a treasure ship sunken by pirates. Does the boat hold the key to massive hidden treasure? –A lesson to all you young filmmakers: a plot doesn’t need anything more than hidden treasure. If you’re ever stuck for, “what should my characters do?” Throw in hidden treasure and you’re golden.
The only drawback to these plots and story told in a series of 10-15 minutes adventures is character depth often takes a beating. This is why we love Raiders of the Lost Ark so much; not only was it great adventure, but Spielberg/Harrison Ford crammed a great deal of personality into that piece of fiction. Contrast that now with Tintin. Ok, I know he’s a reporter. And he’s young. I guess. He has a dog. After that, well, hey, just he’s a good guy, that’s really the important thing. Don’t mind the bland.
By the way, the gimmick “exposition through dog instruction” grows old fast. e.g. “Look, Snowy, the bad guy has taken the scroll, locked Captain Haddock in a trunk, commandeered the Karaboudjan and is using a trained falcon to deliver the goods. He’s also using the Crytoplyx cipher, takes Milk of Magnesia and has a four-toed mistress named Sylvia. Quick, get me untied!”
Which is not to say Tintin isn’t fun. It is. Mostly. There are sea battles and land battles and a fairly good chase or two and a reasonable amount of humor for a non-comedy. Tintin combines some breath-taking animation – check out anything where a reflection is involved, mirrors, glasses, bottles, etc. somebody had a blast with this stuff and it shows. On the other hand, the same minds who figured out how to create anticipation within the worn spectacles of the villain also forgot entirely what women look like. I counted two in a film teeming with men and neither was a flattering portrait. The greater of the two, an opera star, looks like she has beak.
Maybe she was just foreshadowing the falcon. Dunno.
Rated PG, 107 Minutes
D: Steven Spielberg
W: Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish
Genre: Indiana Jones sans Indiana Jones
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Holdouts for the animated “Indiana Jones & pals” Saturday morning cartoon show
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Anti-homage-ists
I completely agree it was an Indiana Jones rehash–maybe his younger, cleaner cousin? Only wanted to add that when the story lagged, the 3D stuff helped keep me awake…er, entertained.
So Tintin doesn’t get a pass despite predating Indiana by 50 years? Wikipedia says the film is based on three particular Tintin comics from the 40’s, and that Senor Spielbergo discovered him when a Raiders reviewer compared the film to the comics. Just asking, I haven’t seen the movie and it’s been 30 years or so since I read the Tintin books at the Montclair Library.