THE Herge estate must be thrilled that they entrusted Tintin to Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson who bring the character to the screen with much of the books’ humor, spirit and sense of adventure intact.

    “The Secret of the Unicorn” is a spellbinding cinematic feat which delivers Tintin to a new generation with the same exhilaration as Spielberg and Lucas reinvented the ’30s serials in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” 30 years ago.

    It is an example of what the Hollywood system does best — harness the best material, talent and technology in the world and cook it up into unadulterated entertainment for young and old. Oh, and it is also glorious in 3D.

    Expanding on the superior motion capture technology developed by Jackson’s Weta Digital for “Avatar,” Spielberg is the first filmmaker to render humans with success, helped by the fact that the characters’ faces possess many of the exaggerated features drawn by Herge.

    It’s not like a Disney animated movie which hits very young children and its intense action and adult notions will mean its fanbase starts slightly older — 10 or so. Adults of all ages will lap it up.

    The story blends three Tintin adventures together — “The Secret of the Unicorn” and its sequel “Red Rackham’s Treasure” and “The Crab With the Golden Claws” — but does not betray the source books, rather displaying great affection to them and the essence of the characters. From the delightful 2D-animated credit sequence onwards, Spielberg tosses in plentiful references to the whole series and aficionados will love spotting them.

    The action starts immediately at a flea market in Brussels where investigative reporter Tintin — after a street artist amusingly paints him just as Herge would have — takes a shine to a model of a 17th century warship. But just after he has bought it, he is approached first by an American called Barnaby, then by a sinister bearded man called Ivan Sakharine keen to buy it off him. Tintin refuses and takes the model home, but when his faithful dog Snowy knocks the ship off a sideboard, the middle mast breaks and a metal tube slides out and rolls underneath it.

    So begins the adventure as Tintin gets caught up in a race with Sakharine to find the two other models of the ship, called the Unicorn. Each of the models contains one of these tubes containing a parchment with clues to the whereabouts of the lost treasure of the Unicorn. Along the way he meets Captain Haddock, the last living descendant of the captain of the Unicorn, who joins him in his quest to foil Sakharine onto an ocean ship to the Sahara and back.

    Each of the Tintin regulars — Thompson and Thomson, Bianca Castafiore, Nestor the butler, the treacherous first mate Allan — is lovingly brought to life, but best of all are the three key characters Tintin, Haddock and Snowy. As played by Jamie Bell (his body movements as well as his voice), Tintin is appealing without being anodyne. As played by Andy Serkis, Haddock is a hilarious Scottish drunk, all his profanities and exclamations intact from the books, and Snowy is the perfectly realized canine companion to them both, his every movement or tweak of the ear enriching his characteristics.

    As you’d expect, the color palette and mass of visual information are sublime. When the eye happens to rest on Tintin’s quiff or Snowy’s fur, the detail is staggering. But thanks to a script by Steven Moffat, and Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, the film’s key achievement is capturing the essence of the books.

    The movie is now being screened in Shenzhen.

(SD-Agencies)