What Happened?

Rating: 4/10 (25 November 2011)

The art of adaptation is tricky. Often filmmakers manage to find nuances from the book and expand upon those nuances to make a movie that is as deep and affecting as the book, unfortunately Hugo is not one such movie.
This adaptation of Brian Selznick's enchanting novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret lacks the taut structure and emotional heft of its source material, resulting in a cinematic experience far from enchanting. Director Martin Scorsese did put together a nice ensemble of craftsmen to create some breathtaking sets, costumes, and cinematography, but the thrill of the expertly crafted crafts only lasts for maybe ten minutes, then one would think the story should draw the viewer in, but it never does.
Hugo is an orphan living in the walls of a 1930's Parisian train station, winding the clocks whilst rebuilding an automaton that his father found before he died. Here is the thing, the actors do the best with what they were given, but the script lacks any real life and feels like a workman's paycheck. Time is never given in the editing or the pacing of scenes to let the audience reflect on the emotions of the moment, so we never see the actor's reacting or showing any emotion to the events transpiring.
For example, after Hugo's notebook is taken by the owner of a toy shop booth that he has been stealing from to get parts for the automaton, he should be devastated, right? But instead we see Hugo, immediately after, winding the clocks and watching people in the train station, laughing at their humorous situations. Not to mention, these attempts at comedy always fall flat, in particular with Sacha Baron Cohen's Station Inspector, whose antics just take too long to develop and fills up far too much screen time. The script by John Logan is just poorly paced, with scenes going from high tension and a hankering for a huge pay-off, to the brakes being hit to deliver a laugh.
While Scorsese obviously shows his penchant for film history near the end with a nicely put together ten minute mini-doc in the movie that details the life of pioneer filmmaker Georges Meilies, ten minutes of enchantment do not make up for a haphazard hour and fifty minutes before all of that. As much of a fan I was of Selznick's novel, Hugo is an adaptation that perhaps should have never happened.
I give Hugo a 4 out of 10!