Movie Review: Hugo

If you have read the book, then you are familiar with the story.  Hugo is orphaned but living in a Paris train station keeping the clocks running as his uncle taught him.  He is constantly under threat of being discovered by the station officer and taken away for being an orphan but for the fact that Isabelle is the granddaughter of the old man who runs the toy stand in the station.  Hugo ends up working for the man after he is caught attempting to steal a toy and the mystery of the automaton Hugo's father rescued from a museum and the mystery of the toy man's past are linked and discovered by story's end.  It's a happy feel good ending, but not without its dangers both physical and emotional.

I pretty infamously will watch and then complain about how much a movie does not compare to a book, particularly if I love the book to the point of having read it a bazillion times.  But, I never read The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick more than the once though I kept meaning to get back to it.  (Side note: Selznick's latest,  Wonderstruck, is equally as enthralling/put together as Hugo Cabret.  Well worth a read.)  So it was with no small amount of trepidation that I went to see Hugo (in 3D, worth the extra cost?  maybe, jury is still out on that though it does give some rich layering to the final product otherwise not seen in 2D) which in based on Selznick's book The Invention of Hugo Cabret.  In the hands of someone else, the movie might have been middling, a typical adaptation that never really lives up to the original.  For, the book version of Hugo is rather a marvel in itself, being in weird chapter book/picture style that's almost like reading a chapter book and a wordless picture book at the same time such to the point that it wowed the Caldecott committee in 2008 to win the award for best picture book.

In the hands of Martin Scorsese, Hugo comes richly to live in what, from the best of my memory, is a truly faithful adaptation of an award winning book.  Asa Butterfield, though perhaps not an exact look alike of the Hugo in the book (and I would argue that few of the actors are exact look alikes, but several come quite close), is the right person for the job.  Butterfield, though not a huge name, is accomplished in his own right and has the ability to express a wide range of emotions despite his youngish age.  He is compelling throughout and maintains enough presence to draw one into the film, as does the also young but talented Chloe Grace Moretz as Hugo's female friend, Isabelle.  The cast is well rounded out by the presence of Ben Kingsley as George Melies and Helen McCrory (better known as Narcissa Malfoy to those of us stateside and likely elsewhere) as his wife.  Sacha Baron Cohen, who I only really enjoy when he is not in a role he created, is perfect as the strict to the rules station officer with a crush on the flower seller played by Emily Mortimer.

Overall, Hugo in movie form is as touching and moving as it is in book form.  I might even suggest I enjoyed the movie more than the book because of the fact it harkens back to the orignal film history it contains by showing and recreating Melies's original material while maintaining the heart of the plot being the relationships Hugo makes through the course of the story.  This is one movie guaranteed good for the whole family and I highly recommend seeing it at some point.  I am interested, having seen it originally in 3D, to find out how well it translates to a normal television, but Scorsese has done something marvelous nonetheless in recreating a story that is more than a boy and his dreams and a man and his dreams.  Must Watch this holiday season.