The Adventures of Tintin ................

Original Tin Tin Cast

When I was a boy, way back when I was seven or eight, every night when I'd got back from school, I'd change my clothes and then dash over to the local library. The library was only about 100 yards away but I had to cross four or five streets to get there and given the Glasgow traffic in the late 50's, it was a miracle that I made it - every time! When I got there, I would dash up the stairs and breathlessly ask the librarian, and yes, she was severe and wore thick rimmed glasses, 'is TinTin back yet'. What I meant of course, was that I was desperate to read one of Hergé's Tintin books and had any been returned.

Invariably, the answer was a stern 'No', but it never stopped me and occasionally, just occasionally, one of the dog-eared books was free and I signed it out, rushed back to our tenement flat and read it and read it and re-read it.

I thought Tintin was a hero, battling the evil powers with the Thomson twins, but for a better description of what it was all about, read this Wikipedia excerpt.......

The Adventures of Tintin is a series of classic comic books created by the Belgian artist Georges Rémi (1907-1983), who wrote under the pen name of Hergé. The series is one of the most popular European comic books of the 20th century, with transaltions published in more than 80 languages and more than 350 million copies of the books sold to date.

Set during a largely realistic 20th century, the hero of the series is Tintin, a young Belgian reporter. He is aided in his adventures from the beginning by his faithful fox terrier dog, 'Snowy'. Later, popular additions to the cast included the brash, cynical and grumpy 'Captain Haddock', the highly intelligent but hearing-impaired 'Professor Calculus' and other supporting characters such as the incompetent detectives, 'Thomson and Thomson'.

In this respect then, i.e., the book's popularity and the number sold, TinTin was the original Harry Potter and it's maybe strange that although I just adored the Tintin books with their escapism and great plots, I have never been able to get into the Potter books despite trying and trying. Whatever, the Hergé books were brilliant and although several film adaptations were made, I was probably into Steppenwolf and Led Zeppelin by the time they came out and never saw them.

Of course, my interest has been rekindled by the recent release of the Steven Speilberg 'Tintin' film and as I was sitting in the Bar des Sports today having a quick lunch (Croque Madame with salad), I was reading a couple of reviews of the film.

Tin Tin and Snowy in the new film

Now, I've read reviews of films which I thought were great, (i.e. I thought the film was great) only to find that the general consensus was that the critics thought it was a waste of celluloid, or whatever they use these days. I've also, and this is more disturbing, thought some films were absolute rubbish, only to find myself in a minority of one as the critics acclaimed it! Is it me or is it them ?

Anyway, as I sat there today reading the reviews and taking in a basic 50/50 split which thought the film was rubbish/brilliant, I was completely thrown by a review written by a  certain Tom McCarthy of the Guardian newspaper.

Now the Tintin films will probably be attended by old guys like me introducing their sons, and maybe their daughters to a great cartoon character of the past, and despite the fact that the film is a 'PG' (parental guidance required), I suspect that it will be a huge hit with the kids given the trailers I've seen. I've forgotten many of the details of the character(s) and indeed the plots (The Crab with the Golden Claws - sounds like a James Bond movie!!) but when I read the Tom McCarthy review, I thought sense had gone out of the window. This is, after all, a cartoon movie, but Mr McCarthy obviously decided that it needed to be critiqued as if it were an epic masterpiece seeking critical acclaim from those on high. Read this and try and work out what the hell he's on about ...............

Their recurrent themes and symbols – the downfall of noble houses, host-guest encounters gone drastically wrong, tombs and their secrets, water, forgery, the Sun (to name but a few) – are entirely classical, the same found in Aeschylus or Shakespeare or Faulkner. They are eminently political, depicting, first from a rightwing perspective, then, increasingly, a leftist one.....

But worst of all is the violence perpetrated against the core impulses of Hergé's work. The deep and disturbing power of the Tintin books lies in the way that they immerse the reader in an inauthentic universe, a world whose veneers are constantly being peeled back to reveal inner emptiness.......

Thus Hollywood's idiotic "message" is forced on an oeuvre that is great precisely because it drives in exactly the opposite direction. It's like making a biopic of Nietzsche that depicts him as a born-again Christian.....

Perhaps this movie will be studied, in years to come, as a Žižekian example of a dominant ideology's capacity to recuperate its own negation.......

What a load of old bollocks - it's just a film, a cartoon, but maybe McCarthy was smoking dope before he went to the preview?