The Adventures of Tintin: the Secret of the Unicorn

This much-anticipated adventure featuring the bequiffed boy reporter sees director Steven Spielberg use the motion-capture process for the first time - it was, of course, used to great effect by Peter Jackson (the Rings trilogy, King Kong), who produces here. Tintin was always a bit on the bland side for robust Anglo-Saxon tastes and, despite delivering sufficient thrills and spills with its tale of lost parchments and sunken treasure, this big-budget dramatisation doesn't do a great deal to make the juvenile hack's personality any more compelling. The occasional Spielberg touches - the back of a hand morphs into desert dunes, which then transform into the roiling waves of an ocean on which galleons enact a sea battle; a crazy motorcycle chase taken in one impossible shot - remind us what a master director he is. But despite Jamie Bell's valiant voice contribution, it becomes increasingly difficult to care about our shiny-faced hero. Only Andy Serkis's boozy Captain Haddock and Snowy the hyper-intelligent mutt triumph over the deadening effect of the technology. There's enough to delight the undemanding youngster here and it's passable entertainment for the rest, but how much better this film would have been had Spielberg not buried it under layers of digital jiggery-pokery, and truly brought it to life.