I’ve avoided the recent revival of 3-D movies like Mitt Haircut avoids the truth.Hugo is the first 3-D film I’ve seen wearing those stupid glasses. I still don’t care for the process: both Dr A and I had mild headaches and a bit of motion sickness at the end of the latest Scorsese opus BUT the 3-D effects were well done and not merely gratuitous. In short, they didn’t just throw shit at the audience and see how much of it stuck to your silly glasses…
More knowledgeable people than me, such as the great Roger Ebert, have pointed out how personal this film is to Marty. (Pronounced Maw-tee.) The director was a sickly kid who spent a lot of time looking out the window of his parents’ apartment and going to the movies. The eponymous character Hugo watches life transpire at a Paris train station and stumbles into some movie magic when he meets Georges Melies, one of the real life inventors of silent film.
The second half of Hugo is astonishing and I particularly liked it because it’s about early film history. I am a sucker for silent film history. It was a time when eccentrics and mavericks, and not corporations, made the movies. Scorsese weaves this history lesson into a story involving kids, washed up film folk and Sasha Baron Cohen as aflic who reminds me of Lionel Atwill’s handicapped cop character inSon Of Frankenstein.
Hugo is a great time at the movies, if the 3-D process doesn’t make you queasy this is an excellent use of it. If it does, either see it in 2-D, smoke some really strong weed or drop some dramamine. I give the film (what else?) 4 stars.