The Adventures of Tin Tin: Secret of the Unicorn (2011)

I hadn't intended on seeing this movie, but since my office selected it for Movie Night, I figured I might as well go. 'Cuz it's free.

And I'm really glad I did.

Tin Tin starts of with our eponymous lead buying a model ship from a vendor. Almost immediately, his house is broken into, and, in the full spirit of "one thing leads to another", Tin Tin gains a comrade in Captain Haddock, and both set out to find the Unicorn, a sunken ship lost in history, said to contain great treasures. It's a treasure/scavenger hunt kinda movie, with exotic locations and mind-boggling riddles, as Tin Tin and Haddock rushes from one place to another to stop the villainous Lord Sakharin from further sulling the Haddock name and finding the lost shipwreck said to contain great treasure.

As you may already know/partially-guessed/realized, one of my favourite things in the world is wordplay (which is probably why I love Terry Pratchett so much), and wordplay is fairly abundant in this movie. I mean, "sour-faced man with the sweet name"? "Monsieur Suegar Adeitif"? GENIUS!

[For that last one, I was the one of the extremely few in the entire theatre who laughed. Think the others must've thought I laughed because of the Milanese Nightingale's accent.]

From the incompetent but unintentionally-twin bobbies (Thomson and Thompson) to the prolonged (but effective) scene in the desert where an unconscious Tin Tin almost slides into the still-spinning propeller, from Captain Haddock's extremely strong alcoholic breath to the final showdown between Haddock and Sakharin that mirrored that of their ancestors, Tin Tin fantastically proved me wrong. Despite my earlier (but unfounded) misgivings that Tin Tin was a children's movie, and my rushing through traffic to the theatre (and missing the first 5 minutes of the film), I had a rollicking good time at the movies that night. I couldn't help but be immersed in the adventure.

You'd think they'd overhyped it because it was a Spielberg-Jackson joint-venture; it's not. I would've given it a second go, if my first time wasn't that late into its theatre run. It really is that highly enjoyable.