The Adventures of Tintin

Over the years, we have seen many worldwide sensations try to break into the American market. Menudo was supposed to be the next Jackson 5. Soccer was supposed to be the next baseball. And, while the folks behind Tintin might have designs on making him the next Harry Potter, he's likely to be more of a Chronicles of Narnia. That's not so bad! It's better than being Percy Jackson The Lightning Thief or The Vampire's Assistant or, and may God have mercy on your soul, Jack The Giant Killer.

In this motion capture animation spectacular, Jamie Bell is Tintin - a young, enterprising investigative journalist who finds himself and his loyal dog Snowy (the second coolest dog in movies in 2011, right after Uggie from The Artist) stumbling into a mystery. After buying a model ship, The Unicorn, a strange American warns Tintin he could be in danger. Tintin quickly starts to realize something is amiss when Ivanovich Sakharine (Daniel Craig) does everything in his power to get that model ship, and, finally, succeeds by stealing it, and kidnapping Tintin!

When Tintin has the one last piece Sakharine needs to solve the mystery, will Tintin beat him to it?

What is the mystery of The Unicorn?

Director Steven Spielberg knows a little something about great adventure movies, and he makes The Adventures of Tintin feel just as exciting and action packed as Jurassic Park or Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it is a movie that will appeal more to kids 8-years old and up.

Based on the comic book series by Herge, The Adventures of Tintin does feel like a comic book adventure without much nuance or subtlety. The characters are broadly drawn, so it is obvious to kids who the bad guys are, and which good guys we should be rooting for. The mystery doesn't so much unfold in front of us as much as it is revealed to us in between action scenes, but those action scenes make the movie.

Spielberg and the animation team provide great, wild, death defying action sequences to get kids and adults in the theater cheering for Tintin and Snowy. Even better, they tend to let the action escalate as the mystery escalates. By the end, it is a thrill ride that rivals any Transformers or Mission: Impossible movie.

However, parents might be concerned about two major aspects of The Adventures of Tintin. First, while it doesn't bother me as an adult, and never bothered me as a kid, the movie features more than the usual amount of gun play. Plenty of people are shooting at other people, which somewhat surprised me, since Spielberg so famously replaced the guns being held by policemen with walkie talkies in the 2002 DVD release of E.T.

Second, some kids might not be ready to handle Tintin's new friend in the movie, Captain Haddock (Ander Serkis), who loves to drink. His outlandish behavior will entertain people of all ages, but younger ones might be confused by the constant references to his drinking, wanting to stop, what happens when he's drunk and so forth. Hopefully, it is not behavior they recognize from Uncle Joe at the family's holiday get togethers.

The Adventures of Tintin has the ability to get kids cheering.

The Adventures of Tintin is rated PG for adventure action violence, some drunkenness and brief smoking.