Went to the movies last night with the family and we saw Hugo. The 3-D feature film directed by Martin Scorsese. I didn’t know the film was directed by Scorsese until I saw a big Hugo banner hanging outside the movie. As soon as I saw that Scorses had directed the film, I knew it was going to be a long movie.
My Family All Agreed Hugo is Boring and Long
As soon as the movie was over and we had dropped our 3-D glasses into the bin, I asked everyone what they thought. We all agreed on two words to describe the movie. Long and boring. It was a real shame because Hugo could have been a really good movie.
The plot featured a young orphan who lived inside a Paris train station. The orphan, Hugo Cabret, winds and cares for all the big clocks in Paris. Doing so gives him access to beautiful views of the city of Paris, and unique, background views into the lives of the people living in the the city. That could have been, should have been really cool, but Scorsese never really made it so.
Hugo Could Have Been Really Good
Steven Spielberg would have had a field day putting a young orphan into such a position above such a great city. Martin Scorsese gave us a long drawn out story, filled with ancillary characters, the lady with her dog and her overweight suitor, that nobody cared about. Even the main story line, where the orphan searches for missing parts to a automaton that he and his father were fixing before his father was killed in a fire, is made less compelling by Scorsese’s drawn out directing.
Sacha Baron Cohen is Awful Playing Wooden Policeman
Movies need to move, especially 3-D movies. Hugo moves at a pedantic pace, with questionable casting. Sacha Baron Cohen is cast as a policeman who hunts for abandoned children to put them into an orphanage, like he grew up in. His character has a leg injury suffered during WW I, and the character is such a wooden, stupid and serious policemen, it’s impossible to root for him later in the movie when we are supposed to.
Hugo Goes Astray with Bad Story Lines and Heavy Handed Directing
If Hugo had just centered on the boy, Hugo, and his story, it might have had a chance to be really good. But the story goes into the creator of the automaton that Hugo and his father are trying to fix. The creator, played by Ben Kingsley, turns out to be a film maker who has given up the craft. Here the movie really goes astray, as the Hugo character is forced into the background as the early filmmaker is celebrated.
I understand how that story line would be interesting to Martin Scorsese, but unless your really an artsy type, your not going to care one bit about this. Those old movies are boring, and so is any story line about them. Sorry if artsy types don’t like that, but that’s the truth. Sacha Baron Cohen acts in Hugo as if he is in an old black and white silent movie.
Reaction of Most Moviegoers to Seeing Hugo was Negative
When Hugo ended about three people in the theater clapped. When they started doing so, you could actually hear most of the rest of the moviegoers groan. Unless you are an artsy type, who doesn’t mind sitting through a long overdrawn un-compelling movie filled with useless, and just plain wooden characters (especially Sacha Baron Cohen’s character), Hugo is a waste of time and money.