If you like movies, magic, or the art of tinkering, then Martin Scorcese’s new family adventure “Hugo” is perfect for you. It’s the best movie to see alone, with friends, or with your family.
Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is a little boy living inside a Paris train station clock. His late father (Jude Law) was an inventor who loved to fix little machines and automatons. He introduces his son to the world of tinkering, as well as the world of movies. After his father dies, orphaned Hugo goes to live with his uncle, who teaches him about clocks. After his uncle disappears, Hugo continues to live inside the station.
Hugo spends his days winding up the clocks, evading the child-hating station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), and stealing spare toy parts from a toy shop owner (Ben Kingsley). All he has left of his father is a broken automaton that they were hoping to fix together and a notebook of his father’s plans. When the shop owner confiscates the notebook, Hugo is willing to do anything to get back a piece of his father, and in the process uncovers a mystery surrounding the automaton.
The first half of the movie dragged a little, using just background story and filler shots, and the real adventure only really starts in the second half, but once you get there, you realize it was completely worth the wait. “Hugo” was also very educational for those who love film (including the 50 second long “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat”, the first movie ever, which was famous for scaring the original audience to death). They used actual footage from some of the earliest films ever, using Melies’ revolutionary stop-trick and the painstakingly hand-painted film used to make movies in color.
Hugo was completely unexpected from director Martin Scorcese. His entire career has only consisted of gang violence and blood and gore (“Departed”, “Goodfellas”, “Gangs of New York”, “Taxi Driver”). As the amazing director that he is, Scorcese was able to step away from his typical graphic kills and make a great family movie. I got the feeling that he put a little of himself into the character, Hugo.
Butterfield plays the clever and brilliant little boy, Hugo, with such talent that you wanted to cry with him. His giant, blue, too-big-for-his-head eyes reminds me of a younger Elijah Wood. Kingsley (“Shutter Island”, “Ghandi”), plays former cinema legend Georges Melies. You most likely don’t know who he is, but in the 1910’s, there was nothing he couldn’t or wouldn’t do, and I loved how Kingsley captured that.
Chloe Grace Moretz (“Let the Right One In”) plays Melies’ bright young goddaughter and Hugo’s friend. She’s extremely well-read and always speaks out of a thesaurus of a book of poetry. Since all the actors but her are English, Moretz had to adopt an accent as well to fit in, and saying it was inadequate would be putting it nicely. Throughout the whole movie, she constantly annoyed me with her unnaturally perky and innocent attitude. She was the only one in the cast who I thought could have given a much better performance. Sacha Baron Cohen (“Borat”) played the mean and sneaky station inspector who hates children. Wounded in the Great War, he wears a leg brace that always gets in the way of his duties and his best friend is a hound. As Cohen’s main job in the movies, he made me laugh.
“Hugo” itself is a very old movie. Not old in the sense that it was made a long time ago, but in the sense that it fits in with what movies used to be like. They were like magic tricks that told stories. “Happy endings only happen in the movies.” Thankfully, this is one of them.
