I was hoping for the best but...

Rating: 2/10 (5 December 2011)

After reading all of the positive reviews following it's release, I was really excited to see Hugo, but I was utterly underwhelmed to say the least. Martin Scorsese is a wonderful filmmaker, which just adds to my confusion about how bad this movie was.
The story is never really intriguing to begin with, but it devolves into messier, and less interesting territory as the film progresses. By the time I had gotten to the final reel, I was just praying for it to end.
I mean, it's great that Scorsese wants to share his knowledge and love for movies, but he can do that in much less time. This is a thirty minute movie drawn out to over two hours, and that is it's major flaw. This could have been made into a short and been far more effective, allowing the thin story line to be constrained into a shorter running time, so that it was not drawn out and boring.
The film has been advertised as a kid's movie, DO NOT TAKE YOUR KIDS TO SEE THIS MOVIE. They will be bored to tears, they won't be able to follow the meandering, thin story, and there's not any action to get them through it.
All this being said, there are small things that are good about Hugo. The performances are great, it's visually stunning, and there's a beautiful tracking shot, but this is not enough to carry a long, boring endeavor that will ultimately leave a lot of audiences frustrated.