Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is an orphan living in the walls of a train station in Paris. His mother died when he was young and his father died in a museum fire. His father and Hugo would often tinker with broken objects to fix them and the last thing they were working on was an automaton (aka robot). Hugo has been stealing from the toy shop in the train station to get the parts he needs to fix the automaton.
When he is caught in the act, the owner of the toy shop Georges (Ben Kingsley) finds his notebook filled with drawings on how to fix the automaton done by his father. Hugo tries desperately to get the notebook back including following Georges home and befriending his god-daughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz). Georges says he has to earn the notebook back by working in his shop. Isabelle gets caught up in the adventure of this boy who lives in the train station. She finds out about his automaton and it turns out she holds the key it needs to work.
They get the automaton working and it draws a picture of a rocket going into the moon's eye with the name George Melies on it. That's the name of the Georges that owns the toy shop. Turns out he is the famous George Melies that everyone thought died in the great war. He made hundreds of films and inspired numerous people into the world of imagination and cinema. However, he thought he lost all of his work and never wanted to speak of it again. Now it's up to Hugo to try and piece together the pieces and fix things.
Being a film nerd, of course I'm going to like this movie. Once I saw the name I knew who they were talking about because I did a report on him in high school, so it was great to see his films (or imitations for parts of the movie) once again. The movie looked beautiful. Scorsese sure does know what he is doing. The story was I think the biggest flaw. It seemed unfocused at times and I wasn't sure where it was going and what the point was.
Rating: ****
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