I was looking forward to this movie and now that I have seen it, I'm not sure how I feel about it. The storyline was quite simple for 126 min (for future reference Mr Scorsese - the younger members of your target audience do not have a 2 hour concentration span).
The scenery was incredible, I loved the opening frames, the use of CGI to create the train station was breathtaking and more often than not, I was distracted from the story line (lucky it moved extremely slowly so even my addled brain had an opportunity to catch-up). The simple use of young Hugo living within the walls of the train station and looking out at the world, disconnected, as it moves through it's paces and Hugo, poor Hugo, stuck within time as it moves all around him. And that's pretty much where my love affair with this movie begins and ends.
The story was at times disjointed and somewhat....convenient. The common thread of the automan, the connecting link between Hugo's past (Jude Law) and future father, George Melies (Ben Kingsley - the original creator of the automan) was sporadic. I could not correlate the shift in focus from the train station to the despondent George Melies, a pioneer movie maker, who had lost everything through his own folly (I don't buy that Melies career was destroyed by the war, but rather the fact he could not adapt to the changing desires of his audience).
It was a struggle for me to follow this change, my desire was to return to the train station - this is where the real story was for me. In my opinion there was enough depth in the story of a boy caught behind (within) time to satisfy the necessities of a good film. Both stories separately would have been enjoyable, together, I felt as though Scorsese had a bright idea half way through filming and randomly decided to connect the two. The two (supposedly) interconnected stories do not have the rhythm of similar juxtaposed story telling films in the realm of Pulp Fiction or The Godfather.
Too often my mind wandered and I found Asa Butterfield (Hugo) frighteningly similar in looks to Elijah Wood (Frodo, do you need a cousin??).
I do wonder thought, whether my satisfaction with the film would have changed if I had seen it in 3D?
Regrettably, a 1/5 star review from me.
I'll be interested in your opinion. Brooke and I saw it in the cinema and I wrote a one paragraph review at the time. I was planning to rewatch it again on bluray and expand my review. But I might pop mine up now so our match up :)
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