Tintin in Tinseltown

A longtime Tintin devotee, ROSITA BOLANDloves the orgininal comic books, created by Belgian artist Hergé, so much she approached Spielberg's much-heralded computer animated film – which opens in cinemas today – with caution

TINTIN! TINTIN the movie! In 3-D! Captain Haddock! Snowy! Steven Spielberg directing! Peter Jackson, he of Lord of the Ringsmagic, producing! Billions and trillions of blistering barnacles of the bluest hues!

Such were the cartoon-like exclamation marks sparking from around my head when I heard about The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. I've been a Tintin fan since about the time I could grab hold of a book and stare at pictures.

The first Tintin book in our house belonged to my eldest brother, Arthur. It was a hardback of Red Rackham's Treasure, minus the back cover, and I read it roughly a hundred times, possibly more. Arthur was clearly not as taken with Tintin as with Asterix, because he possessed many, many Asterix books. He was an Asterix person. I was a Tintin person. And forget what people might say about liking both, that's a nonsense. Everyone has an opinion. You may like one of these classic comic-strip series, but the other, you will love.

I read all the Asterix books, but – heresy! – they never charmed me.

Gaul seemed paraochial, before I ever knew what the word meant. And Asterix and Obelix’s geographical world seemed so small: revolving around the village, the forest, and long marches to places with Latin names. With lots of wars. Every book seemed to be a variation on the others: fighting wars with the help of magic potion (surely cheating!), and eating boars.

One of the first books I bought with my own saved-up pocket-money was Tintin In Tibet. I'd never heard of Tibet, but as a small child I happily went there frequently; to that extraordinary place of snow, mountains, prayer flags, remote monasteries, monks, visions, and yetis.

In time, I also went on adventures to the moon, South and Central America, Scotland, Egypt, the Middle East, and many countries that did not actually exist. I first saw images of Mayan statues in the pages of Tintin decades before I saw the real thing, and recognised them with a shock of pure joy.

For me, the Tintin books are comic-strip genius because every element of them works perfectly.

There are the meticulous, beautiful drawings.There are the breakneck narratives, where each frame appears to burst out of the page with energy. There are the characters: clever, brave, and sometimes stubborn Tintin, boy reporter, with his trademark quiff and enviable little dog, Snowy, who knocked Dogmatix for six out of the comic-strip ball park and sent him home with his Gaulish tail between his legs; impulsive, chaotic, loyal, rum-and-whiskey-seeking Captain Haddock; and so many others, including the ever-pompous detective twins, Thomson and Thompson. There are the locations, and the ethnographic details, to which Herge paid such close attention. As comic-strip books, they have perfect pitch.

About eight years ago, I had a small unexpected windfall. I wondered what I would do with the money; vascillating between putting it in the bank and buying something new and extravagant of the clothes variety, something I rarely do. I was wandering through Eason's when I saw a row of Tintin books. I still had my childhood copy of Tintin in Tibet(Arthur's Red Rackham's Treasure, alas, longsince lost). It was the only Tintin book I owned. All the others I had borrowed from libraries.

I marched up to the till and ordered, there and then, the full set of Tintin. In hardback. The assistant was so astonished she called out the manager to have a look at this peculiar adult serial-Tintin-book-buyer, to confirm it was indeed the entire set I wanted, and not just one book. The books, I discovered with delight as I reread my way through them, had kept their charm for me into adulthood. Unlike many books read in childhood, that seem somehow thinner, less substantial when you return to them with adult experience, Tintin was, if anything, even better.

This time reading them, I had actually travelled to many of the places depicted in the books, and I too was a reporter, albeit one who appeared to have many more deadlines than Tintin ever did.

And so, to the Savoy cinema in Dublin last Friday morning, where The Adventures of Tintinwas having a press screening. There have been other Tintin movies in the past, but I never saw any of them. By the time I walked into the Savoy, I had already read some feedback about the new movie. People had very strong feelings indeed, including the man from the Guardian, Nicholas Lezard, who wrote, that on coming out of the movie, he found himself "for a few seconds, too stunned and sickened to speak; for I had been obliged to watch two hours of literally senseless violence being perpetrated on something I loved dearly".

I’m not a movie critic, so I haven’t been to many press screenings. I’ve been to enough, though, to know it’s usually only the press who are present, occupying a scatter of seats in the middle tiers. Once we were all seated, 3-D glasses on noses, there was a sudden burst of noise and in scampered the sixth class of a boys’ primary school in Clontarf. I could almost see the think bubbles over the heads of the movie critics who turned to stare aghast at the interlopers: “Thundering typhoons! Children! Fresh water pirates! Baboons!”

The Adventures of Tintinis an amalgamation of stories, rolling them together in the way that movies take liberties with books. It's a story of lost treasure, warring anscestors, adventures at sea and secrets contained in a trio of model ships. I didn't mind that. As a fan, I was primarily focused on what the characters – my inanimate, yet so animate friends of old – would look like on screen. The film was shot using a process called "performance capture", where real actors' movements are recorded and then translated into animation. The opening credits were an imaginative marvel, showcasing all that is best about Hergé's books, with a gallery of places the adventures take place in. You could play the opening credits as a short in itself, and I am guessing it will appear on YouTube in due course. And what of my friends? I held my breath and waited for Tintin, who was getting his portrait drawn, to turn around (end result: his Hergé self).

Red quiff, check. Blue jumper, check. Fawn trench coat, check. Round face . . . looking like it had been botoxed, and weirdly china-doll like.

I looked at Tintin and the botoxed Tintin looked hopefully back at me. I sighed. He looked away, because his on-screen adventures had already started, in a city that looked like Brussels.

Snowy, on the other hand, made an excellent transformation. He didn’t “Woah! Woah!”, but he did look like Snowy, and he behaved like Snowy, being greedy, mischievious, funny, smart and enterprising.

It was when the Thompson Twins arrived on the scene that I started noticing the Curse of the Noses. They were bulbous. Many characters had exaggerated features. The twins’ bulbous noses looked ridiculous. They looked like carictures of their comic-strip selves. I felt embarrassed for them.

It was a long time before we got to Captain Haddock. Poor Captain! We all know he was overly fond of his rum and whisky, but the man we first see, in his trademark sea-blue jumper with its anchor motif, is a sorry, sozzled mess. He is plastered, and oh my, his nose is the size of a small balloon. The Thompson Twins look as if they had had rhinoplastry by comparison. In the books, Tintin frequently reprimands the Captain about his drinking, but mostly in a stern-yet-playful way. In the movie, he often sounds haranguing, and as if he’s lecturing the Captain on the merits of the Twelve Steps. The tension between the two characters was off-kitler as a result. And Captain Haddock had a Scottish accent. I wasn’t expecting that. It didn’t sound right. I won’t have it. I’d always thought Captain Haddock was as English as, well, a nice serving of haddock and chips.

In between, there is some fabulous computer graphic work, which makes ships toss around wild oceans. The amalgamated stories rattle along. There is much that is lovely to look at, including the carefully observed details of Tintin’s apartment, and the villa where singer Biana Castafiore breaks every piece of glass near her.

As for the fresh water pirates and the new generation of Tintin fans, they were obviously under threat from their teachers of walking the plank, because barely a sound did they utter throughout. At the end, they clapped, which is not what the hard chaw, appalled movie critics were doing.

It could have been a lot worse. It was often pretty good. I was glad I saw it. But it didn’t come anywhere near the sheer genius of the books themselves, and if you think otherwise, you’re a lily-livered landlubber, a baboon, a nit-witted nannygoat, a bald-headed budgerigar, a mountebank, a jellied eel, and frankly, nothing but gallows fodder.