Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972)

Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972)

Directed by: Raymond Leblanc

Starring: Jacques Careuil, Georges Atlas, Jacques Balutin

For those of you who don’t know, Tintin is kind of like a French Encyclopedia Brown or Hardy Boy; a boy detective with a cadre of “friends” who solve mysteries, usually involving James Bond-esque villains. When I was a kid, the public library had a bunch of Tintin comic books and I read the shit out of them, because he did all sorts of crazy stuff like… well, I’ve forgotten now, but it was cool, okay?

Tintin, his dog snowy, and his drunken sea captain companion Captain Haddock travel to some Eastern European-ey town and find that there’s a crazy guy at the bottom of the lake with a shark-shaped submarine who’s been stealing pearls. There’s adventure, intrigue, and Captain Haddock being a drunken idiot. Fun for the whole family!

This is definitely a movie for little kids, and I admit that I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t really enjoy it because of all the stupid shit that wouldn’t have bothered me twenty years ago. Really, it’s not so much a bad movie as it is just annoying and weird. The only character I could relate to was poor Captain Haddock, the character they go far out of their way to showcase his alcoholism. It’s great. I think that’s what they always say, “as soon as you find yourself hiding whiskey in your golf bag, then bringing that golf bag with you everywhere for no reason, you are officially an alcoholic.”