The Adventures of Tintin

Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost PG cert, general release, 107 min

Spielberg's rip-roaring adventure is fun in spite of the soulless animation, writes TARA BRADY

IN FRANCE in 1949, a baffling alliance of Catholics, Communists and French nationalists pushed through a ban on comic strips deemed “liable to undermine morality”. Positive depictions of crime, cowardice and anti-national sentiments within children’s literature and illustrations were duly rooted out.

In practise, the new law was a protectionist measure against such marauding foreigners as Le Mickey Mouse and Le Superman. Beneficiaries included Tintin, the clean-cut Belgian boy journalist created by Hergé 20 years earlier, who went entirely unmolested.

Half a century on from that erratic ruling, and the bubble- faced adventurer is still a major cultural touchstone for that strange place we call abroad. But back in Anglophone town, Tintin’s twee brand of can-do has only ever cut it with the middle classes and continentally inclined. English- language editions of the books have drifted in and out of print on this side of the Atlantic; in the US they’ve never been published at all.

Just ask Steven Spielberg. He's held the rights to Hergé's creation since 1983. Even for the ETdirector, Tintin has been a hard sell. As recently as August 2008, studio executives were turning up their noses at the project.

So after all this time, after countless doodles, drafts and revisions, has Spielberg at last managed to transform the Eurohero into an American-friendly " Indiana Jonesfor kids"? Not quite.

The film-maker’s chosen medium – that unholy marriage of motion- capture and cartoon exaggeration – fails to avoid the traditional pitfalls of the technique; the eyes look soulless, the faces are animated death masks, and the hyper-reality never allows the viewer to disappear into the movie.

The designs only add to the distress. Hollywood's Tintin(produced in conjunction with Peter Jackson's Weta Digital imprint) is simply too human in aspect to adequately channel Hergé's illustrations, yet too stylised to function as a real live boy.

This aesthetic dithering impacts erratically across The Adventures of Tintin. An early sequence in which Snowy, Tintin's faithful canine companion, chases after a cat, hangs uncomfortably between Avery and Attenborough. Later, Captain Haddock's nose begs that you count the pixels.

Still, if the graphics let us down, the material never does. An old- school sense of boy's own adventure adheres to this loose adaptation of three Tintin tales ( The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicornand Red Rackham's Treasure). A straightforward screenplay, fashioned between Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish and Dr Who's Steven Moffat, pleads directly to the young Master from a single digit age group.

Our journey begins with Tintin's purchase of a model ship, a fine replication of a vessel called The Unicorn. Within seconds, the hero (Jamie Bell) finds that his acquisition has attracted the attentions of a dastardly aristocrat (Daniel Craig), thereby kick- starting a bouncy travelogue toward long lost treasure.

As a chase picture, the results are occasionally exceptional. A thrilling ride through a Moroccan market does, indeed, make one think of Indiana Jonesfor kids. Elsewhere, galleons crash into the Sahara and cobbled streets echo in the darkness. Spielberg's virtuoso flourishes are complimented by a series of playful references to Robert Bresson, Saul Bass and Stanley Kubrick.

The high points are enough to keep Tintin on its toes but can’t quite atone for the Frankenstein medium. There’s a chill in those pixels and something cold, too, about the professional, polished delivery. Motion-capture veteran Andy Serkis steals the show with his Captain Haddock, yet we never feel a particular connection between his character and Tintin.

Like the misshapen digital humanoids onscreen, The Adventures of Tintinhas style but no heart.