The Adventures of Tin Tin

Tin Tin is, of course, the Steven Spielberg-engineered motion-capture phenomenon of a movie. And while the animation is simply unbelievable, you get over that in the first five minutes, and watch the characters go, go, go.

It's non-stop action for the three main characters: Tin Tin (played by Jamie Bell), our boy reporter, his helpmate Captain Haddock (played by Andy Serkis) -- who is in love with anything in a liquor bottle -- and the villain Sakharine (played by Daniel Craig). And it's a very simple plot -- Tin Tin finds clues to a buried treasure, and all three try to find it.

There's no getting to know characters. There doesn't seem to be any time for it. So while I admired the motion-capture technology and how real Snowy (Tin Tin's dog) looked -- I swear, I could see every piece of fur on the dog -- there's no there there. There were one or two sequences that were amazing to watch, but that was about it. Rush here, rush there -- that's not enough for a solid movie. Everybody is as thin a character as they could be and still "live."

This could play well as a kids' movie, although I think that even children would get bored with it after awhile.

While I'm amazed at Andy Serkis's performance as Cap'n Haddock, I hope he gets a best actor nomination this year, but not for Tin Tin. For Caesar.

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