(Dir. Martin Scorsese Starring: Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Mortez, Ben Kingsley, Sascha Baron Cohen)
Watching A Trip To The Moon again on the big screen was spectacular. Being able to see, in colour and in movement, the glass studio of Georges Melies (Kingsley) was such a treat, it reminded me of why I started to love film in the first place.
Sadly, the film was also in 3D (which we all know I hate), and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t being projected properly because I had the most unrelenting headache after the fact. Ouch.
So here we are-Hugo (Butterfield) is a boy living in the walls of a Paris train station. He works the clocks under the drunken guidance of his absent Uncle (Ray Winstone), and on the run from the persistent Station Inspector (Cohen), intent on doing the actual sane and sensible thing of sending poor Hugo to the orphanage. Where he’ll be looked after. Maybe not all that well (I don’t really know the typical Orphanage conditions in 1930’s Paris, but let’s try not to go by typical horror film conventions), but he would have a proper roof above his head, be schooled, and be fed on a regular basis.
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| He's behind you! |
Not as fun as running around a train station all day long, but in these type of films, exactly what you’d expect the Bad Guy to try and do-send an orphan with no one to take care of him to a home of (possibly) caring adults (maybe nuns)! Ooh, so mean, what a bitch.
Uh, anyway. So Hugo runs around the station, and on occasion, steals various bits and pieces from the toy seller, Georges, so that he might be able to fix the creepy robot he and his dead father (Jude Law! He’s back!) were working on...before his, you know-death. Hugo is intent on fixing this contraption, his young mind having to believe that once he completes this task that there will be one last message from his beloved dad. Aww. So sweet.
Eventually Isabelle (Mortez), Georges’ goddaughter, joins in on the fun (apparently she doesn’t go to school, but still manages to live a life of comfort), unknowingly holding the key (literally) to mending the creepy robot.
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| Creepy Robot. |
I don’t have a heart of ice, I promise you, but this film...did absolutely nothing for me. There was not nearly enough...good acting to tide me over. In an interview Scorsese had said that once they had cast young Butterfield in the title role, he had decided on keeping the rest of the cast in a British accent to match his (Butterfield’s, not Scorsese’s-totally different film, otherwise). Which meant that young American Mortez had to carry around this atrocious swotty British accent. Which either deteriorated her acting skill, or she had none to begin with (Kick Ass is the only other film I’ve seen her in).
So instead of becoming invested in the main character, I ended up living for the moments when Melies would grace the screen, and show off the wondrous world of the birth of cinema. It was a time of creation and amazement and magical tricks-illusions-that left its audience in awe. That’s what I wanted to see more than Hugo running around, really.
Basically, if you took out everything with Hugo and Isabelle, I’d have walked out of a short film very, very happy. If not a little headachey.
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