Martin Scorcese delivers a wonderful family film

Rating: 10/10 (1 January 2012)

Well, I finally had a chance to see Hugo in 3D. I have a lot of wonderful things to say about this movie. Back when I heard this movie was coming out when I saw the trailer of it, I just assumed that it would just be one of those average whimsical family movies that come out during the holidays and I was also really surprised that Martin Scorsese directed it as well, because I'm really used to watching his other movies that are about the mob or a character study of someone's life. But, much to my thoughts going into it, this movie really left a huge smile on my face from the beginning to end. The movie is about a boy named Hugo who is an orphan who lives in a train station in Paris, France and he starts to uncover a great big mystery about his father who was a very great inventor. During the course of the movie, the boy tries to build this machine that his father worked on called an automaton, which is basically a mechanical man that can write messages and decrypt hidden meanings. I really loved where this story was going with Hugo learning the secrets his father left behind for him. I wont spoil what happens, but, all I can say is that watching this movie really kept me invested the whole time with it's characters with a very perfectly cast of actors in these roles. You've got Ben Kingsley who plays Papa Georges who was once a very talented filmmaker during the height of the early movie making days. I love this back story they give him later on in the movie and it feels very meta in a way because there's a part where Hugo and George's goddaughter Isabelle are watching one of the first movies ever made on a projector that shows a train coming and she says, "When the audience watched it, they thought the train was really coming toward them". :). Gosh, I have so much to talk about with this movie. From the beautiful cinematography and atmosphere of the train station and outside of it, to the really spectacular 3D that I really did enjoy. It felt like I was really there inside this world and it reminded me of the way Avatar looked in 3D. It's very in depth and gorgeously crafted the way it's filmed. And in the movie when they talked about the way the early films were made really got me really intrigued on how much work was done for the kinds of movies that this character had made. As for the rest of the film, I really also enjoyed the performances of the main character of Hugo, played by a newcomer named Asa Butterfield and he really pulled this part off. He showed a lot of great emotion in his scenes and he's really smart on building things such as this mechanical mouse and finishing the automaton for his father played by Jude Law. And then there's other characters in the movie too that I enjoyed, but I thought could of been better developed such as Sacha Baron Cohen's quirky role as Inspector Gustav, who had some funny lines of dialog and he did a good job playing this smarmy train station inspector and as the movie goes on, he does actually become a 3 dimensional character. Overall, I really loved this movie for everything that Martin Scorsese did with it's coming of age story of a boy who did everything he could to make his father proud and learn more secrets about his life and I give props as well to the music. It's very orchestral and melodic and worked so well in tone with the film. At first I was little skeptical about Martin Scorsese making a children's film, but, much to my surprise, this movie felt more than that. This movie is in the same league as Super 8 with terrific performances, wonderful cinematography, a well put together story, and leaving a huge smile on my face from beginning to end. This movie has been one of the best films I've seen of 2011 and It's on my list of Top 12 of movies I've seen for 2011.