"Do you want to have an adventure?"

Rating: 10/10 (3 December 2011)

3-D movies have been in the mainstream for a few years now but I've never been compelled to see one in that format. So given the choice today, I stuck with 2-D and when all was said and done, I was suitably impressed. The period setting and particularly the workings of young Hugo Cabret's (Asa Butterfield) clock tower home were visually stunning to me; all those gears and wheels working together harmoniously together conveyed a sense of logic and purpose to the unfolding story. What I wasn't expecting was director Scorsese's unbridled tribute to cinema as an art form when the picture steers a path toward the life work of film maker George Melies (Ben Kingsley). Reaching all the way back to the silent film era, Scorsese makes a connection with all those great directors of a time gone by - Chaplin, Keaton, Griffith - and I found myself enjoying snippets of their own pictures interspersed throughout the story.
As for the principals, I found the youngsters Butterfield and Chloe Grace Moretz providing the heart for this picture, aiding the Kingsley character Papa George to cast off the despondency of his current life to relive the glory of an earlier time. Now had I known Sacha Baron Cohen was in this film, I might have stayed away from it altogether as I'm no fan of Borat. But he gives an interesting and amusing performance here as the train station inspector attempting to make a connection of his own with the fetching flower girl Lisette (Emily Mortimer). He provides a nuance to the character that I wasn't expecting given the absurdity of some of his previous work.
Virtually every other review I've read about the film on this board mentions it's relevance as a kids' movie, but somehow I didn't get that sense while I was watching it. It doesn't present a childish theme or approach it's subject matter in a juvenile way; in fact my impression was that a real young child might have to have a fair amount of the story explained to him or her. Certainly the areas of the picture dealing with the silent film era, including the recovered Melies reels would be almost boring for a young viewer. However considering my overall impression with the picture coming out of the theater today, I'd have to say that I'm ready to make that mental leap of faith by seeing my first 3-D film, and it very well may be "Hugo".