A beautiful but woeful, empty film

Rating: 1/10 (9 March 2012)

At the beginning of Hugo, we're promised a charming tale of a boy living in a train station who forms a relationship with a bitter old toymaker and his intrepid goddaughter.
Oh, and there's a robot-toy.
For the first half of the film, there is NO mention of films or film-making. Well into the film the boy and girl talk about films. He is aghast that she has never seen a film, so they go watch one.
It is like the director dropped what he was doing with "Hugo" and just suddenly decided that he wanted to make a movie about movies. From there, it becomes a self-indulgent tale about a filmmaker.
Oh, and Jude Law has a one-scene cameo as the boy's father. The scene suggests that there's a mystery to be unfolded later on - but on that storyline we're left stone cold.
Visually, every moment of this film is outstanding, maybe even magical - but substantively it is not about anything at all.