Asa Butterfield as "Hugo"
“HUGO” My rating: C+
127 minutes | MPAA rating: PG
This is a great idea for a movie.
Of course, that’s not the same thing as actually being a great movie.
“Hugo” finds American master Martin Scorsese turning his attention from R-rated mayhem to family-film friendliness.
But he struggles to put himself on a child’s wavelength. “Hugo” is too cerebral, too methodical, too cool in its emotional palette. There’s just not a lot of joy here.
Plenty of eye-popping visual magic, though. The film is Scorsese’s first in 3-D and it looks terrific. The settings and effects are splendid.
Still, this feels more like an elaborate test reel meant to try out visual tricks than a fully-shaped and inhabited drama.
Hugo (blue-eyed Asa Butterfield, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”) is an orphan living in the walls, cellars and catwalks of a sprawling Paris train station in the 1930s.
His father (played in flashback by Jude Law) was a clockmaker who died leaving Hugo with just one possession — a four-foot tall automaton, a mechanical man whose complex, rusted innards are badly in need of repair.
Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz
Now Hugo lives in a fantastic netherworld of huge turning gears and pistons, billowing steam, slippery chutes and dripping pipes. He emerges to steal food from the cafes and mechanical parts from a toy store operated by the aged and supremely grumpy Georges (Ben Kingsley).
Frequently he’s pursued by the Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), who has a gimpy leg and an aggressive Doberman Pinscher.
Striking up a friendship with Georges’ goddaughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz, of “Kick Ass” and “Let Me In”), Hugo tries to solve the mystery of the automaton and in the process discovers something wonderful:
Georges is none other than Georges Melies, the first genius of the cinema, who at the turn of the century created nearly 80 fantastic short films (“A Trip to the Moon,” “Illusions Fantasmagoriques”). Now Georges lives in obscurity and near poverty.
With that revelation, coming halfway into the film, we discover the real meaning of “Hugo.” It’s not a film about a little boy…it’s a film about film.
Scorsese is celebrating the magic of movies here; he employs actual footage by the real Melies and recreates the heyday of Melies’ magic-filled studio.
This is catnip for anyone interested in film history, but for everyone else it is slow going.
Literally. The film is at least a half hour too long; tightening it up would have improved it immensely.
There are moments when it seems like “Hugo” could become another “Amelie” — sweet, funny and charming.
But “Amelie” had a character we fell in love with. Scorsese doesn’t seem all that interested in his human players. He’s far more fascinated with the mechanical man, with the mechanics of early moviemaking.
The result is a movie with lots of head and not much heart.
| Robert W. Butler
My wife and I were absolutely mesmerized by “Hugo,” right throught the end. We loved the concept and the visuals, of course, but also the characters and the unfolding plot. It is a cerebral film, which unfortunately means it probably is not attractive to young kids, but this is not the first excellent film about kids which is more suitable for adults. I think is is worthy of an Oscar nomination.