491st Review: intriguing but not involving enough?

Rating: 6/10 (11 March 2012)

Hugo is beautifully made with some fabulous shots that show the complexity of CGI and imagination - and reconstruct in beautiful details the interior of a Paris railway station in 1930. It is a film that should be about cinema and our love of cinema, but, excepting the final twenty minutes never really engages us in that love.
We sensed a lost opportunity here to create some real magic that was lost in its determination to tell the story of Hugo and not to tell the really interesting story that lies behind it. We really like the two child stars and Ben Kingsley is excellent - the fault lies in frankly spreading an idea too thin.
All in all, this should be a film about why we love cinema, the art form of the 20th century so much, about how it takes us to other worlds so wonderfully, but Hugo never quite captures that sense of wonder and instead we are stuck at the station waiting for a train that never arrives.