Review: Hugo

daniel cohen looks at Martin Scorsese’s children’s film…

Plot: Set in 1930s Paris, Hugo is the tale of a young boy (Asa Butterfield) of the same name who lives alone at a train station after his father (Jude Law) dies, and his uncle (Ray Winstone) abandons him. Hugo spends his days stealing parts to repair an object known as the automaton, for which he believes holds a message from his late father, but instead, Hugo ends up unlocking a mystery that’s much bigger than any of that.

Hugo claims there is imagination in all of us, but rather than show us anything imaginative, the film just tells us it’s possible, like a messenger. And it’s a really boring message. This was a painful movie for me to sit through. Aside from an interesting ten minutes towards the end, I couldn’t get invested in anything going on whatsoever. The tone is all over the place, the dialogue is odd, and it’s cluttered with so many useless side plots and secondary characters, that it creates a very muddled two hour plus movie. But worst of all, it’s a film wrapped in a mystery, and the mystery is just not very interesting.

I’m all for movies keeping me guessing, and making sure I’m alert, but you can’t just introduce questions and call it a day. You have to leave the audience with some type of hint as to what’s going on, and that’s not at all what happens in Hugo. Not until maybe two thirds into this movie did I even have a clue as to what this automaton might mean. And even then, whenever a question is answered, it’s through dumb luck, with no interesting set up whatsoever. And in the grand scheme of things, once it’s revealed what the automaton does, it really doesn’t connect that much to the larger meaning of the film. And that’s BS, because we spend more than half the movie looking at this Toys ‘R’ Us version of I, Robot!

This is a really lazy script. Let’s look at a movie like Inception. Inception kicks ass because they give you just enough information as the film goes along so you can hypothesize what’s going to happen next. Hugo just randomly gives you an answer when it feels like it.You spend the first half hour just learning what the set-up is, which leads me to my next complaint.

This is one slow ass movie. There is so much wasted time spent on useless characters and plots, it’s just boring to watch. Sacha Baron Cohen does a good job as the angry and strict Station Inspector, but his character is completely useless. He just takes time away from the main story. Nothing about his character is interesting, he isn’t funny, there’s a romantic angle they take with him that’s kind of compelling, but he’s basically just there to chase Hugo around for a few scenes so he can trip and fall over stuff. And worst of all, those scenes are painfully long. This is in the first ten minutes, and this entire run around between the two characters has absolutely nothing to do with the main story, yet it dominates half the film! Christopher Lee is completed wasted as a librarian, there’s a lame side story with some lady’s dog barking at this guy that goes on everyday at the station that’s supposed to be charming and funny I guess, but it serves no purpose, and is completely random. There’s just a lot of randomness in general to this movie.

What also pissed me off was whenever a major question gets answered, the movie goes off track for fifteen minutes before delving into the next mystery. It’s like the film said, ‘Hey, we figured something out. Let’s go take a 25-minute coffee break.’ And we actually see the coffee break! Just when you find yourself maybe getting invested into this film, we have to watch Hugo stare out the window for five minutes, or the useless Station Inspector do something not funny. Even after the big mystery of the film is revealed, there’s another ten minute chase scene between Hugo and the Station Inspector. I don’t care about this! How does the mystery they just solved emotionally affect all the characters? Can we go back to that instead of this Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote chase scene?

One of the few good things I can say is that the acting was pretty strong. Asa Butterfield plays Hugo, and he carries the film pretty well. He’s got a maturity level beyond his years, but still has the imagination of a child. He’s got great chemistry with Chole Grace Moretz’s Isabelle, who is also very good in the film, even though she’s a little too Emma Watson first Harry Potter movie, meaning the acting is over the top. Isabelle’s dialogue feels very forced, and even cringe-worthy at times. As I mentioned, Cohen is good, but useless, and Ben Kingsley was solid as Isabelle’s godfather. He holds a lot of weight in the film.

The one intriguing element is at the end when we pretty much get the back story of what this whole movie is about. Without spoiling anything, I found it interesting that the director (Martin Scorsese) is basically telling me why I don’t like this movie. And while I found that fascinating, my biggest disappointment with the message of the film goes back to my original point in that this movie thinks it’s really imaginative and creative, but it’s really not. It’s just telling us we can be imaginative, but I wish the movie actually did it.

Scorsese clearly cared about this movie a lot. When you look at his past work, especially his last few films, they are usually very dark, and focus on insecure people who are about to reach their breaking point. I almost felt like he was ready to do another one of those movies, but just said, ‘Screw this, I need a break,’ and instead chose this very lighthearted script. Unfortunately, he just didn’t know how to go about it.

At the end of the day, the film goes on and on about how Hugo went on this emotionally draining adventure, and how he never gave up, and yadda, yadda, yadda. But I didn’t feel any of that because the film spends a lot of time with so much other useless crap, that the main plot just gets lost in the shuffle, and it wasn’t even that good to begin with. There’s some good acting, the film looks pretty, but quite honestly, I felt a sense of freedom when the credits came on. That’s how badly I wanted this movie to end.

Rating: 5 out of 10 (Barely Passable Entertainment)