Search - The Adventures of Tintin, Vols. 6-10 on DVD

Close, but no cigar...

Francisco J. Calderon | Mexico City, Mexico | 10/27/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I grew up reading The Adventures of Tintin, and they're nothing less than spectacular: great characters, thrilling plots, and an overall wonderful sense of adventure, friendship, humor and tenderness. Perhaps one of my fondest memories from childhood.



These French-Canadian animated series do try to be faithful to the original albums, but there's something missing. For one, they tend to be politically correct, so they skip most of the truly interesting moments (I would have loved to see "The Blue Lotus" in all its dramatic historical context). The comic strip was drawn mostly in the thirties, forties and fifties, when suttleties were not in fashion, and yes, there were ethnic stereotypes in it, as in everything else at the time. So what? That's part of its charm (see NOTE BELOW)!



Two, there's not enough time to tell these stories properly. The albums held the reader in suspense for hours; for a TV show to do so in minutes it's not possible. And it ain't the same.



Three, the series don't live up to their fantastic opening secuence, which promises something extraordinary. Those brief moments give the old Tintin aficionado the thrill he's expecting. Not that it all goes downhill from there, but the animation, although good, is no first class either. It would take a major DreamWorks production to achieve that. By the way, I heard Spielberg was working on a Tintin project. Any news? Someone?



P.S.: Watch out for several Hergé cameos a la Hitchcock throughout the episodes. He's the lanky blond gentleman with his hair combed in the middle.



NOTE BELOW: Hey, I'm Mexican and I don't get offended by "The Broken Ear"! In fact, I don't get offended at all! Not by Speedy Gonzalez, Slowpoke Rodriguez, Go Go Gomez, Jose Jimenez, Señor Wences or any of that stuff (maybe Pat Buchanan, but he also makes me laugh)! On the contrary, this P.C. cr@p nobody enjoys really gets on my nerves! How come you can get "Birth of a Nation" on DVD but not "Song of the South"? Isn't it nonsense?"

You and your children should view these great stories

Leon Alvarado | USA | 03/24/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"As a child, I grew up reading books by Conan Doyle and Jules Vernes. They spoke about amazing adventures in amazing places with amazing characters. On the lighter side of that spectrum, I read these Belgian comic books with Tintin the reporter, his dog Snowy and his best friend Captain Haddock. The stories are interesting and full of interesting characters globe-trotting around the world from book to book. To this day, I still have my collection of Tintin books at home. The research that went into the Tintin comic books seeking authenticity are subjects of a book by themselves (Tintin: The Complete Companion). The DVDs faithfully reproduce the stories from the original books. The animation is incredible in capturing the characters without loosing anything from the original drawings. The voices and the handling of the music evoke an European flair that is welcome for this type of animation. The only major drawback to the whole thing is the film-to-video transfer. It really doesn't do justice to the animation. First, the colors are a bit washed-out and seem to have a slight white cast around the whole thing. Secondly, the edges of things are not as sharp as they should be. Given the fact that the material now exists in digital form, they should've saturated the colors and sharpened the image somewhat, this is not a hard thing or an expensive thing to do. It seems to be an oversight, but in my mind, a costly one. Third, the packaging is well design but very flimsy. They would have done better with a litho-laminated sturdier paper board instead of the flimsy cardboard used (think, I-phone boxes). I would have easily paid five more dollars for better packaging materials.

In all, the stories are wonderful and worthy of viewing by the whole family. So while I'm in my family-kick, I will recommend this to everyone who cares for good story telling over "hyper-kinetic" offensive cartoons like some of the stuff found today in television."

Nice retro toon

DC Ron | Washington, DC | 06/11/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Boxes are in French only (panic!) but menu allows English dubbing. It's a cartoon but has an adult, or maybe that's a retro, feel. For example, the Captain drinks a bit. Still a nice series of morality tales--Tin Tin treads the high road!"