Hugo 2011
This was a movie I always wanted to see, but never got around to watching. It is an unusual movie for Martin Scorsese who usually makes more serious movies for grown-ups, but like all of his movies, it still got a lot of raves from critics (and like many of his movies lately, not entirely deserved). Audiences were maybe less impressed. As a movie for kids, it is pretty slow and the payoff has to seem pretty anticlimactic. For grownups who are a little more patient and with a little more perspective, it should be a little more rewarding, but even so the movie has a lot of flaws. For some reason, I thought the movie would go into some kind of computer animated world at some point, but I think the previews showing the inner workings of the clocks of the Montparnasse train station in Paris made me think there was some other world involved. In the end, this period piece children’s adventure seems a little stuffy and kind of sad, but things work out nicely. There is a very good cast of adults even though the movie mostly concerns the child named Hugo and a friend he meets, so the adults don’t have much to do. The final act seems to come a little out of left field and as I said is a bit anticlimactic.
Written: 18 Nov 2017
Owned on: Blu-ray