The Adventures of Tin-Tin

What to say about Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tin-Tin? I feel the same way about this film as I did about Martin Scorsese's Hugo: A master filmmaker can take technical innovations introduced by lesser lights and show how it's really done. Tin-Tin (a motion-captured feature starring the bodies and voices of Jamie Bell, Andy Sirkis and Daniel Craig) is leagues beyond your run-of-the-mill animated wizardry. Each frame is so richly detailed it is almost an excess of artistry. It was too fabulous. I was put in mind of Stendahl Syndrome, that phenomenon that happens to some folks who visit art museums and are overwhelmed by the beauty. That's how I felt about Tin-Tin, which is based on the classic adventure comics by Belgian artist Georges Remi, who went by Herge. Tin-Tin is a ginger headed reporter who jets around the world with his faithful and equally intrepid terrier Snowy. In the film, Tin-Tin follows clues around the globe (literally) to a pirate's hidden treasure. It's a wildly exhausting ride but, oddly enough, it's so well-crafted it feels more like a masterclass exercise than anything.