A sweet love letter to cinema. For once - and aptly - the 3D actually enhances the film (the only other film I've seen use it as well was Coraline). The two children at its centre are each just right; the many established adult actors around them disappear impressively into their roles: Robin Williams and Sacha Baron Cohen I only picked after watching them for some time; Emily Mortimer I thought I recognised but wasn't sure about; and I missed the fact that Melies was Ben Kingsley altogether until the credits - though Jude Law and the completely ummistakeable Christopher Lee hold up their ends well too. There's a hint of both of those great fantasists Gilliam and Jeunet to Hugo, but it's softer-edged and more golden than anything that either of those others have done (though, for the most part, correspondingly without the shadowy, sinister nightmare edges that really make films like The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus or The City of Lost Children linger); and it's a film utterly in love with Paris. I liked it.
(w/ C)
(w/ C)
