Adventures of Tintin, The: Secret of the Unicorn

What’s it about?

Tintin is a well known investigative journalist, despite his youth, and his best friend is Snowy, a fearless dog. One day Tintin buys a model of a replica pirate ship, the Unicorn, at an outdoor market. The Unicorn sank over 300 years ago. Tintin’s immediately approached by a sinister man, Ivanovich Sakharine, who wants to buy it off him. When Tintin refuses, Sakharine kidnaps Tintin (and stowaway Snowy) and imprisons him aboard a cargo ship.

Tintin discovers a scroll inside the model ship and realises this is one of several that will lead to sunken treasure from the Unicorn and this is what Sakharine is after. Tintin and Snowy manage to escape and take with them the drunken Captain Haddock who has been tied up by his crew. Haddock and Tintin now have to find the other scrolls before Sakharine does.

What to look out for

There’s quite a lot of cartoon violence including swashbuckling pirates, sword fights, gun shots and non-stop action such as:

• Tintin is hit over the head with a torch and knocked out.
• Sakharine’s men force a drug-soaked cloth over Tintin’s mouth, putting him to sleep.
• Sakharine threatens Tintin by holding the tip of a sword to his face and telling him if he doesn’t talk he’ll break every bone in his body.

There are also other scary scenes which would frighten younger kids such as:

• Tintin crash-lands in a plane and is thrown out of the windscreen. He’s knocked out and lying very close to the propeller. Snowy has to come to the rescue and pull him away.
• Tintin is chased by a fierce Rottweiler, Snowy tries to distract it and is nearly run over by cars and then tramped on by cows.

Moral of the Story

The message of the story is that you should fight for what you believe in and never give up.