Customer Reviews

The Adventures of Tintin, Vols. 6-10

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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?

I got both Tintin DVD sets for Christmas and I LOVE LOVE LOVE them! I think I've seen each DVD, both in English and in French (it comes with both) at least 3 or 4 times. I love to watch them while I work or do stuff.

Anyone who knows anything about the history of Tintin knows that he evolves all the time. The books we buy today are not the books that were originally published, are not the original strips that were first published in the Belgian Catholic newspaper in which Tintin was born. Everytime Tintin was changed, he was refined- he became less naive, more politically aware, more worldly (as opposed to Belgian). Whether you think this is a good or bad thing is up to you.

While these DVDs are not identical to the comic strips, I appreciate them for a few reasons. First, they're good, clean entertainment. They bring Tintin to life in a wonderful way. Plus, they're a great way to practice my French. You can watch these in English or French with English or French subtitles.

When I visited Chenonceau, the chateau on which Moulinsart was modeled, they had a Tintin exhibit in one of the stables, and they were playing one of these cartoons, in French. It was great.

I highly recommend these for anyone who loves Tintin or who is trying to learn French in a creative manner.

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.

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!

This is part two of the two part box set. This is a beautifully done set, when both boxes are placed side by side, and the episodes are put in the correct order, the spines area the picture on the side of the box (Tintin putting his coat on and snowy running in front of him, and TINTIN spelled across the top). It's a small but wonderful thing sitting on my shelf.

This is the set if you are looking for the more original stories that the 2011 Adventures of Tintin movie was based on. The Castefiore Emerald is one of those love hate episodes - on the one hand, there's a bit too much Castefiore singing, on the other hand I love the banter with Captain Haddock and the poking fun at the bourgeois. This set is probably the most Tintin of the pair - Herge took Tintin to some faraway places. This is a little like an early travel log.

The animation looks lifted from the books. The director kept the drawings, colors, and simplicity of the books. Some of the stories may be a bit modified from the books, but I think the spirit is in all of these. In contrast to The Adventures of Tintin movie, which embellished the stories and didn't hold to the more basic colors of the cartoons.

The wonderful part of this particular set, compared to the newer set that is just now being released on DVD, is the choice between French or English soundtracks (the new set is English and Spanish). Although I'm the only fluent French speaker in the house, we all like the names and sounds in the French soundtrack better. Millou sounds so much better than Snowy. And there's something about DuPont et DuPont, compared to Thompson and Thompson.

Overall this is a fantastic set of DVD's. I was very lucky to purchase these in Canada several years ago when they were first released. I'm not certain they are worth the really high collector price being asked, especially when essentially the same movies will be available on a 2 disc set.

I love watching the adventures of Tintin, these are intelligent, amusing, and family friendly animated films.

The DVD Box set:
The Adventures of Tintin, Vols. 1-5

The 2011 film:
The Adventures of Tintin

The new DVD releases:
The Adventures Of Tintin: Season One
The Adventures Of Tintin: Season Two

My adult son loves these cartoons...I bought this for a gift for him and he still watches them and enjoys them!

Je travaille dans un programme d'immersion à l'école internationale de la Louisiane, et ma collègue utilise plusieurs BD de Tintin dans ses cours de français avec nos élèves de middle school. La version dessin animé de ces histoires leur plaît beaucoup!

Although they took a while to get (to the degree of doubt), we finally got the two collections. I thought that the box is going to be bigger and I was surprised to see that each collection was in a single DVD box. They are recorded on two sided DVDs and each disk had 4 episodes. They are all in good condition.. Our whole family loved them..

The Adventures of Tintin, Vol 6-10 great entertainment for the whole family. Vendor timely and merchandise excellent.

The DVD's work but the main language is french, which I don't speak. Because of our DVD setup it won't allow me to select anything but french. I would have liked to have known that the main language was french before purchasing. It would work fine at if your DVD player selection options works, but our DVD player doesn't allow that...Anyone else would have been fine with it although the cover is in French as well.