Hugo

When the phrase, “kid movie” comes to mind, especially during the holiday season, it’s easy to groan at the perpetual fluff being unleashed in the theatres (Alvin and The Chipmunks, Arthur Christmas, etc.). However, when you notice that a kids’ movie is directed by Martin Scorsese, you think that he’s lost his mind. But with Hugo, Scorsese has created his first family-friendly and heart-warming film about the history of the movies.

Based on Brian Selznick’s award-winning book, Hugo tells the story of a French orphan (Asa Butterfield) living in the walls of a train station in Paris, circa 1931. When Hugo is not fixing the clocks in the station, he is trying to fix a machine his father (Jude Law) was working on before his untimely death. Fixing the mysterious device becomes difficult when Hugo encounters Papa Georges (Ben Kingsley), the bitter owner of a toy shop who catches Hugo stealing his tools and the cold-hearted Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) who arrests children without their parents to save them. Helping Hugo along the way is Georges surrogate daughter (Chloe Grace-Moretz), an adventure seeking girl who helps Hugo unlock the secrets of Georges’ descent into misery.

Asa Butterfield and Chloe Grace-Moretz give incredible performances as the bright-eyed wanderers venturing in and around the elaborate train station. Kingsley’s emotional performance as the passionate filmmaker-turned-miserable store owner Georges Melies adds to the roster of some of his best performances (Gandhi, Sexy Beast). Cohen adds the laughs to the film as the bumbling inspector, with his Borat mustache and high-brow antics toned down for the audience.

I’m not a huge fan of 3D movies. When I saw Toy Story 3, I couldn’t help but take my glasses off to enjoy the brightness of the film rather than the dim and tinted glow of the screen. However, it was still a good movie and I had that same attitude before I saw Hugo. However, within the first minute of the movie, I was stunned by visual designs of Dante Ferretti, the sharp lighting by Robert Richardson and slick camera work helmed by Scorsese. In essence, my preconceived notions of 3D films withered away during this 120 minute love note to cinema. Scorsese, the polestar of film preservation, manages to introduce to younger audiences the work of a bygone era (Griffith, Porter, the Lumiere Brothers) mixed with homages to Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton with state-of-the-art cameras. Despite the ebb and flow of films as an art form, Scorsese’s Hugo manages to create the perfect marriage of art and entertainment as he has successfully done for over 40 years.

Four out of Four Stars