If you haven't see this movie go out and watch it with your kids, it's that good. This is one of the best kids movies I've seen in a long time. I watched Hugo over the summer by myself just to see how much of a kids movie it was and then today I watched it with my kids: my girl liked it better than my son but my son still watched it, just not as intently as my girl did for some reason.
As far as directing goes this is one of Scorsese's best directed movies in a long time. I would put it in his top 5 of movies directed, and it's a kids movie at that. Who would have thought the tough guy, foul mouthed, gangster, with blood through his veins could direct a kids movie like this? Not me that's for sure. I think that's one of the reasons this movie took me by surprise as much as it did.
The visuals alone are worth watching and it will be the visuals that will have your kids sitting watching intently to what is going on for minutes on end. We've been watching movies together for a long time but I've never seen them as focused watching a movie without dialog and solely relying on the visuals to tell the story. As a movie buff and fan it was joy to watch them become fully engaged with the visual storytelling of the movie. It was also a pleasure to see that Martin Scorsese hasn't lost his directorial touch, though I never thought he did but he's just chosen some terrible screenplays to work with.
This time I watched the movie to see what I missed the first time I saw it. I didn't realize the opening scene lasted 12 minutes before the title of the movie flashed across the screen and in that 12 minutes the entire story line and characters are set up in some very beautiful continuous shots that not only set up characters and storyline but also immerse the viewer into the world of Hugo. I just loved the over all all theme of the movie: machines, gears, mechanics, broken machines and mechanics fixing those machines.
This movie has at the basis of it a very blue collar mentality, you know getting in there and getting your hands dirty. One of the lines of dialog I remember sets up the theme perfectly, "If you have no purpose, you are broken." There are so many broken things in this movie: Hugo (with the death of his dad), Georges Melies and his wife (the death of his dream and the inner death of her husband), the automaton that is truly broken, and the station agent (the death of trust and intimacy because of the war). Then the reliance to machines is an interesting aspect of these people lives also: George Melies (the film projector and mechanical toys), Hugo (the automaton and clocks) and the station agent (his mechanical leg). Hugo connects them all together and tries to find his purpose in life after the death of his father and how all of these stories interweave is a joy to watch.
I also like how the story weaves in a historical lesson on how movies started, which depending on how you look at it is also just one big machine but ultimately the machines in this movie that need fixed are the humans living their lives. Some realizing their broken and other unaware of their brokenness. I know most kids won't pick up on these heavy themes, I think there put there more for the adults, but the kids will sympathize with a kid - Hugo - who lost his father and finds a friend in another kid - Isabelle- and the relationship that blossoms between is a delight to watch unfold before my eyes.
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