First of all I have to say that I liked this movie but it was very flawed and advertised completely wrong. From the trailer I thought it was going to be some fantastic adventure movie along the lines of City of Ember or Tintin. There is no adventure to speak of. There is a mystery which is soon uncovered and isn't what you expect.
The movie starts off very slow with an insanely pointless intro of Hugo running around the train station where he works tending the clocks. They spend so much time showing this that you think that the intricate labyrinth he goes through and the people whose lives he watches will be important. But they aren't.
Then you have a long and pointless background which could have easily be summed up in a few minutes but is dragged out, probably in an attempt to replicate the novel (I can't be sure on this never having read the book) but things that work in a novel do not always work in the movie.
It feels like the whole beginning section of the movie was meant to be about something else and then the story randomly digresses and follows a new story to which is sticks to the end. My sister said very aptly it's like those Simpsons episodes that start off with something random and then turn into a completely different story. Funny in Simpsons, annoying in Hugo. It's like the person who wrote it wasn't sure what it was going to be about until halfway through writing it. But it's been adapted from a novel so I don't understand why it's so confused.
When the story finally starts and you realise it's not a fantasy movie after all but more of a homage to early film makers (or rather one in particular) you can begin to enjoy it. The children acted well in some parts and awfully in others and there were times when the dialogue seemed unnatural.
The final scene in the movie could have been good but was just anti-climatic. It's a scene of the automaton sitting with pen in hand alone in a room. You expect something to happen, for it to move or write/draw something but all you get is a creepy close up of its face and then nothing. Pointless.
The script seriously needed some proper editing before it was made into a movie. It just felt badly thought through and disorganised. It could have been much better than it was if they had taken enough time over it.
Nevertheless, like I said, even though it wasn't what I expected, I enjoyed it for what it was in the end.
