Pleasant, but unfortunately too modest and lacking ambition

Rating: 6/10 (2 December 2011)

Tackling 3D for the first time, I think Scorsese has hit the ball out of the park with Hugo, his film was gorgeous. Unfortunately he forgot to give us a compelling story.
Hugo is a noble film, but it is never quite sure what kind of film it wants to be. It is a little too mature to be a kids movie, yet it's too cartoonish to be an adult movie. One minute, it is played as a fantasy in the kind of world where the moon is bigger than the Eiffel Tower, and the next minute the film is played realistically; a serious biography of one of cinema's pioneers. Indeed Hugo's best quality after it's look, is its educational factor. How Ironic it is to be watching bits of hundred year old George Melies films on a cinematic format that was almost invented yesterday. The photography was diverse and spectacular, the characters were charming and quirky, but in the end, the movie just wasn't compelling enough.
I went in expecting to laugh and cry in all the right places, and I didn't. I guess that's more Spielberg's terrain; Scorsese is much colder than that of course. Hugo is pleasant, but it's not a great movie