Scorsese screws up

Rating: 3/10 (23 July 2014)

HUGO was marketed as being this huge, magical children's feel-good adventure film, Oscar bait and a visual triumph from director Martin Scorsese. Having just watched it, I can instead report that it's the director's worst film to date, an overblown and deathly dull outing that disappoints from the outset. Even Scorsese's assured direction can't disguise the shortcomings of the script.
Essentially, HUGO is a tribute to the work of early cinema pioneer Georges Melies, played well by Ben Kingsley. However, this part of the film takes up half an hour at most and Scorsese would have been much better off making a documentary about Melies as it would have been much more interesting. The rest of the film is a non-starter about a orphaned kid lurking around in a Paris train station.
The film goes for a steampunk style look which was already done in CITY OF EMBER, so visually it did nothing for me. The CGI effects are over obvious and it annoyed me that effects like a toy mouse and a character climbing a wall were achieved by CGI when they could easily have been done physically - it's sheer laziness. Asa Butterfield is an extremely limited actor who brings zero warmth or charisma to his lead role, to the extent that I was hoping he'd disappear from the screen before long - no such luck though.
Much of the film concerns a ridiculous sub-plot involving the dreadful Sacha Baron Cohen, once again going completely over the top as a comedic station inspector who chases the titular character about. How does this "actor" still get work? The comedy is laboured and unfunny and I was cringing in places. Then elsewhere we get Chloe Grace Moretz, way out of her comfort zone and inanely grinning at everything and everyone around her. The film drags on for over two hours, throwing endless cameos at you (hello, Christopher Lee!) and it easily feels like double that length. Yes, I hated it, if you couldn't already tell.