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And tellingly, Spielberg’s spectacular comic-book blockbuster suffers some of the same problems as Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal: instead of speaking to the child in all of us, it often just seems childish.

But let’s say that again: Spielberg’s Tintin is spectacular. Harnessing Avatar’s 3D motion-capture technology, it plunges us into an extraordinary animated world that’s both stylised and real, cartoony but alive with detail. Veins popping out on arms. Hair ruffling in the breeze. Reflections flashing off blades.

Not that there’s much time to drink it all in. Opening with the cutest joke of the movie, Spielberg’s film sees quiffy Belgian journalist Tintin (Jamie Bell) buying a model of an old ship called the Unicorn at a market, only to find himself whirled into a hunt for the real ship’s missing treasure... and we’re off.

Kidnapped and imprisoned on an ocean liner by sinister gent Sakharine (Daniel Craig). Escaping with bearded whisky-sponge Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis). Chases. Plane crashes. Gun battles. Fist fights. Oceans, thunder storms, deserts and cities. Ships, aircraft, jeeps and motorbikes. It just doesn’t let up.

Motion-capture magic has allowed Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson to conjure impossible action scenes – and when it works, it really works. Arriving in flashback in the delirious mind of a desert-baked Haddock, the film’s most extraordinary sequence sees the desert itself morphs into the churning sea as we’re transported back to the titanic 17th-century battle between Red Rackham’s (Craig) pirate galleon and Sir Francis Haddock’s (Serkis) vessel the Unicorn.

Trouble is, Spielberg just gets carried away. More turns out to be less, as Tintin’s relentless franticness leaves the whole movie feeling like one of Indy’s runaway mine-carts. Confusing and chaotic, Tintin’s manic pace saps the excitement as the plot clatters wildly forwards without much care for what’s happening and why.

It’s fun, it’s fast, it’s visually breath-taking and it’s definitely missing something. But what? Ironically, the empty space in the middle of the film is our hero. It’s not the mo-cap animation that’s expressionless, it’s Tintin himself. Belgian artist Hergé may have drawn him as a blank space we could pour ourselves into, but on screen he’s just a charisma abyss.

Perhaps neutered by a kiddie-friendly brief, the all-Brit writing trio of geek-kings Steven Moffat (Doctor Who), Edgar Wright (Shaun Of The Dead) and Joe Cornish (Attack The Block) gives us a story that’s lacking in any real emotion, danger or sex. Even the film’s only female character looks like a man in drag.

But while bumbling, identical detectives Thomson and Thompson (Nick Frost and Simon Pegg) are irreverent comic relief and Daniel Craig’s sneering baddie doesn’t carry the menace he needs, it’s Andy Serkis who once again proves the master of mo-cap. His Captain Haddock is a wonderful creation: shambolic, whisky-soaked and pillaging all the movie’s best gags. Not least when stumbling upon the surreal sight of a sailor with no eyelids. "That," sighs Haddock, wistfully, “was one hell of a card game.”