Set in 1930s Paris, Hugo is the story of an orphan living in a train station, wrapped up in a mystery involving his late father & an automaton.
Review
I have to say, that as a special effects maven & a long time fan of Georges Méliès, I loved the movie “Hugo”. Where a documentary on the life on Georges Méliès wouldn’t have received this much acclaim, this is an entertaining story of a young man. In the process of his story, learning what’s happened before, he begins to learn piece by piece about this mysterious filmmaker. At the same time facing conflict with his alcoholic uncle, and the train inspector. Since he’s surreptitiously living in a train station, working on something his father found, and making a true friend. A great, entertaining story.
Editorial review of Hugo courtesy of Amazon.com
In resourceful orphan Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield, an Oliver Twist-like charmer), Martin Scorsese finds the perfect vessel for his silver-screen passion: this is a movie about movies (fittingly, the 3-D effects are spectacular). After his clockmaker father (Jude Law) perishes in a museum fire, Hugo goes to live with his Uncle Claude (Ray Winstone), a drunkard who maintains the clocks at a Paris train station. When Claude disappears, Hugo carries on his work and fends for himself by stealing food from area merchants.
In his free time, he attempts to repair an automaton his father rescued from the museum, while trying to evade the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), a World War I veteran with no sympathy for lawbreakers. When Georges (Ben Kingsley), a toymaker, catches Hugo stealing parts for his mechanical man, he recruits him as an assistant to repay his debt. If Georges is guarded, his open-hearted ward, Isabelle (Chloë Moretz), introduces Hugo to a kindly bookseller (Christopher Lee), who directs them to a motion-picture museum, where they meet film scholar René (Boardwalk Empire‘s Michael Stuhlbarg).
In helping unlock the secret of the automaton, they learn about the roots of cinema, starting with the Lumière brothers, and give a forgotten movie pioneer his due, thus illustrating the importance of film preservation, a cause to which the director has dedicated his life. If Scorsese’s adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret isn’t his most autobiographical work, it just may be his most personal. –Kathleen C. Fennessy
Cast of characters
- Ben Kingsley (Ghandi; Iron Man 3) … Georges Méliès
- Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) … Station Inspector
- Asa Butterfield (Ender’s Game) … Hugo Cabret
- Chloë Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass) … Isabelle
- Ray Winstone (Beowulf) … Uncle Claude
- Emily Mortimer (Mary Poppins Returns) … Lisette
- Christopher Lee (Horror of Dracula; The Three Musketeers 1973) … Monsieur Labisse
- Helen McCrory … Mama Jeanne
- Michael Stuhlbarg … Rene Tabard
- Frances de la Tour (Blondie: Footlight Glamour) … Madame Emilie
- Richard Griffiths (Funny Bones) … Monsieur Frick
- Jude Law (Captain Marvel (2019)) … Hugo’s Father
- Francesca Scorsese … Child at Café
- Terence Frisch … Circus Barker
- Max Cane … Circus Barker
- Ben Addis … Salvador Dali
- Robert Gill (At the Earth’s Core) … James Joyce
