Hugo 3D (3/5 Stars)

I love movies that much is for sure. But my love is a love with certain limits. A good movie may change a man, it may mold the way he empathizes, teach him something new, or inspire him to his own adventures, but there is no truly special quality within a man that gives him the ability to make movies. In other words, the Academy Awards are nice to have because movies are culturally important, but the nominees and even winners do not deserve the heaps and heaps and heaps of idolatry and praise that they receive. The difference in importance between a world famous great actor and an obscure great accountant is negligible. They both require natural talent and learned skill. The difference is that one is on a big screen that lots and lots of people will see see while the other sits in an office and has but a few clients. Thus the actor’s importance is distorted to an obscene degree while the accountant goes shamelessly unnoticed. Actually, I take that back. It probably takes far more to be a great accountant. (I would also argue that people recognize the greatness of actors and athletes far more readily than scientists and doctors because the greatest of an actor or athlete is very easy to understand. You may need a PHD before you understand just why a particular doctor is great.) That’s why I am sad to say, I was not overwhelmed and enraptured as Martin Scorsese probably felt I should be by the presence of Director Georges Meliere on the screen of this movie, even though he did make some of the best movies at the dawn of cinema. There should be a rule that stops directors of movies from making movies about movie directors. (The same goes for writers that write books and screenplays about writers.) I say you are sipping the poison fame cocktail that distorts your importance and inflames your ego to an insufferably pretentious degree.

Not that this movie is too insufferably pretentious. It is directed by Martin Scorsese with that subversively excessive amount of brilliant flair. It stars Asa Butterfield as a young boy named Hugo Cabret. Hugo’s father (Jude Law) dies in a fire one day and his uncle claude (Ray Winstone) adopts him into his work apartment at the Paris Grand Central Station and teaches him his job of winding all the clocks in the station. Then Uncle Claude goes AWOL on a drunken bender, leaving Hugo in the station alone. As long as he keeps the clocks in order though, nobody will check to see who is occupying his uncle’s apartment amongst the machines. When he needs food, he steals it. When he needs mechanical parts for the secret ??? he is building in his apartment, he steals it from the toy store run by a crusty old man (Ben Kingsley) who may just be the forgotten father of cinema Georges Meliere. Chasing the young thief in hope to catch him and send him to an orphanage is the imposing station inspector played wonderfully by Sacha Baron Cohen. Playing Meliere’s granddaughter is none other than Chole Grace Moretz, that girl of fourteen with such maturity her face could pass for twenty-five.  

The story is simple like all children’s stories and basically consists of Hugo's quest of fixing the secret ???? and getting old cranky Meliere to appreciate his past greatness all while outrunning the station inspector. The movie looks great, but don’t all movies nowadays. The camera moves deftly and in great long shots like other Scorsese movies, but these ones are obviously helped with special effects and other types of cheating so they do not have the same type of impact. The kids when going off on an adventures find themselves in libraries reading books or in movie theaters watching new movies (by that I mean very old movies. This is the twenties.)  Is that exciting? Uh, well, let’s get back to that a little bit later.

There needs first to be said something about the acting chops of children. I find that children act much better in movies opposite adults in scenes. Think of such great child acting movies like “The Road,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” “The Sixth Sense.” They all have kids interacting with adults.  When children act with each other it yields less fruitful results (because let’s face it, acting is reacting and children do not know what they are doing (perhaps we can make an exception of Jodie Foster and Dakota Fanning)). Chloe Grace Moretz in particular is not a very good actor. I can picture somebody on YouTube doing something rather funny with her line, “Don’t you just Love Books?!?” Asa Butterfield is forgettable. I wonder if Kodi Smit-McPhee was busy or something. I feel he could have done much better. Not to mention Kodi and Chole had already successfully worked together in “Let Me In.” Perhaps that might have helped.

The one that steals the show quite consistently is Sacha Baron Cohen. He has the vast majority of the movies laughs and delivers his scenes with that peculiar quality only a comically tall man can apply. Ben Kingsley as George Meliere for his part spends far too much time crying. He may have good reasons for it or not. All of this, and whether libraries and movie theaters are adventurous, hinges on whether one would think that Melieres is just the greatest thing since sliced bread. I would think only a couple of people in the audience (and most likely none) would have even heard of the guy. Well, I have heard of him. And I have seen his masterpiece: A Trip to the Moon. In fact, I have seen almost all of the old movies that are sampled in this movie from Harold Lloyd’s "Safety Last," to Buster Keaton’s “The General” to Louie Brooks in “Pandora’s Box,” to Charlie Chaplin. It is so common for critics to fawn all over these movies and say they are the best ever and that movies were never so good since. My opinion: These movies are generally okay but not great movies. The exception would be the average Buster Keaton movie, which I find works astonishingly well in the 21^st century. But overall, we make better movies today. We have a better idea of what we are doing, we have a century worth of trial and error knowledge, and we are armed with technology that makes what we want to create much more easier to accomplish with tightened budgets. George Meliere’s was a pioneer no doubt, but his sci-fi epics come off rather amateurish by today's standards. "A Trip to the Moon" had only one long distance camera shot. There was no acting or dialogue to speak of and absolutely no character development. The totally super famous shot in “A Trip to the Moon,” where the rocket lands into the moon’s face is well, iconic to say the very very most. It is worth seeing this movie like it is worth knowing who won WWI, but it does not a great movie make. And if like me, you think it isn’t all that worth hooting about, you will feel rather detached during “Hugo,” which treats that movie like it is so totally all that. It isn’t. Take my word for it. You wouldn’t want it too last much more than its running time of ten minutes.

By the way, this will be the last 3D movie I ever see. Not once did I feel I would be missing something if I paid five dollars less and saw the movie in 2D. If Scorsese can’t pull this technology off than nobody can. It doesn’t deserve to exist. Too dim, too distracting, too disturbing. Please stop.