“Hugo” or you know how Family Guy starts out with one story but changes to another?

Well, I didn’t know much about this film before I went so I didn’t really have expectations, except that it was a Scorsese film and thus must have some substance.  And I think the film lived up to that, but, I don’t know, something was just a little off.

I liked the initial tone of the film, it reminded me a bit of Amelie, with the nice Parisian setting, musical score, and band of quirky characters.  But it didn’t really develop those stories very well.  The main story line about Hugo, the boy who secretly lives in the walls of the train station, doing a grown man’s job, but stealing food, because he doesn’t get paid for it, seems a little contrived.  The first half of the film especially, seems chock full of clichés.   The story is stuffed with interesting characters with underdeveloped story lines: an awkward station inspector with the creaky leg brace, (which you know immediately Hugo will have to replace to make good) the pretty flower vendor he has a crush on, the café owner, whose little dog keeps scaring off her potential suitor, the news vendor and the cranky toy vendor who treats Hugo badly. These stories contain nothing that you don’t see coming a mile away.

Hugo himself has a standard orphan story; his father has died leaving him only a broken (rather creepy) automaton, which Hugo feels compelled to fix in a futile effort to communicate with his dead father. 

The story moves along in a pretty familiar way, Hugo trying to resurrect the automaton and reconnect with his father and then bam! the movie takes a complete turn, and the second half becomes a commercial for the motion picture academy’s film preservation efforts.  Don’t get me wrong, I think that film preservation is a VERY important cause, but it just jarred me out of the movie.  Following a huge coincidence the story line about Hugo’s father disappears and refocuses on the toy vendor. 

Now don’t get me wrong, the film has beautiful production values, and the actors are all very good, but I left feeling like I had missed something,  The film felt disjointed and unsure of its direction.  In the end I was left saying, mmmmmm I’m just not sure what to make of that.