Adventures of Tintin

I expected this movie to be good.  It was really good.

First you should know, I love movies about 12-year-old boys, if I can say that without sounding like one of you perverts.  I love Sandlot, Super 8, Little Big League, Holes, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and almost every other movie whose hero is a 12-year-old boy.  I was a 12-year-old boy once, you see.

Tin-tin looks like 14 in the movie, though he acts much older, and owns a gun, and has a job as a reporter, and lives alone, or without parents, at any rate--he does have a dog.  That's really the movie's weakness--you don't know or learn much about Tintin as a character.  He starts out as a young Indiana Jones, but without the fun quirks.  And he ends up that way, too.  We don't know how he got there, or why someone obviously so young does what he does.

But don't let that stop you.  The movie is quite a ride, with great action sequences that remind you of the afore mentioned Dr. Jones.  None better than the chase through the city following a bird with important sheets of paper.  Sometimes great action gets discounted if its animated, but it's no less animated here than the action in most heave f/x movies.

And the movie wastes no time on expository dialogue, which I hate.  (It was the real weakness of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.)  That may be why we know nothing about Tin-Tin the character, but not wasting time on back story has its advantages, too.