Magical -- an enchanting 3D film with real emotional depth

Rating: 9/10 (3 December 2011)

Hugo is a film that enchants the heart and also captivates the mind. It tells its story interwoven with a fascinating history lesson about Georges Méliès, an innovative French filmmaker. It is as much a film for adults as it is children. When we discover the fate of many of Méliès' films, we feel genuine sadness for him after all his endeavours, and we really feel a sense of the freshness of film as a medium as it was then.
The images in Hugo are of course stunning! There is a real charm, beauty and inventiveness to this film, fitting, given that "Méliès is sometimes referred to as the First "Cinemagician" (Wikipedia).
Ben Kingsly is a mesmerising presence as Georges Méliès, and Sacha Baron Cohen as the station inspector is also fabulous! There is a beautiful message in this film about what can happen when you allow yourself to heal and move forward in life. I came out of the cinema feeling inspired.
Hugo is a breath of fresh air, weaving together a narrative of broken machines and broken people and the beginning of their healing, through the actions of one small boy who stands up for what he believes in.
*****spoilers below!*****
As an addendum I wanted to add a comment in response to the people complaining that we don't get to see the automaton do very much, that the film builds a sense of expectation that is never fully realised. We don't *need* the added FX of seeing the automaton fly into action at the end of the film -- the magic has already been created in the healing journey for the central characters. Not only that, but what is left to the imagination often works far more powerfully than the actual images themselves ever could (we've just been conditioned by Hollywood into thinking otherwise).
For those who like a good, fast, action film, with lots of stuff getting blown up, you probably won't like this. But for anyone else, give it a try. This film is great sleight-of-hand by Scorsese, he builds us up believing something might happen with the automaton, and yet we suddenly see the story was really about something else far more important all along. *Do* take your children because if they can sit through this they mightn't be as willing to consume the tired, formulaic excuse for films that we get bombarded with nowadays.