pretty

Rating: 1/10 (15 March 2012)

(Saw it in 2-D at home, so, please rate my judgment accordingly.) Reminds me of The Train, 1964 John Frankenheimer/Burt Lancaster, another Hollywood film made by people who love French movies but have zero clue how to make one, or perhaps, just don't have the requisite DNA....The Train at least an honorable, if sometimes risible tombeau; Hugo filled with old-fashioned Anglo stereotypes of Frenchiness - so, disrespectful as well as shabby and false, and therefore utterly boring.
Visually, it worships the Lionsgate logo -- you know, that clockwork CGI thing that comes before your DVD -- but slathers on even more sepia. Every surface in the film, even things that must have been real, looks artificial, computer-generated -- the absolute triumph of cinema mendacity: falsehood 24 times a second.
The emotional content is just as artificial. Blinded perhaps by the impossible collision of cinema verite and CGI, the affective fails even as manipulation -- it's no more involving than a shampoo commercial.
A sad sad affair -- go get Les Quatre Cents Coups.