Haiku Movie Review: "Hugo"

Like the film itself, the child-actors Asa Butterfield and Chloe Grace Moretz look great, and they really can act. But like the film, they cannot sustain the emotionally diffuse story, which would have been better had it focused on Butterfield's Hugo and his emotional life. Like so many Scorsese projects, it betrays a belief that the characters are tools for conveying directorial concepts, and not really developed with love or attention to the details that really motivate us. "Hugo" is not a film for kids so much: it's a more muddled and less skilled Cinema Paradiso, an homage to film and especially the wonderful Georges Méliès that aims at the wonder created by that great filmmaker but needing a lot more focus, fewer and better characters, and most of all needing the great French director's heart.

Another Haiku Movie Review.  I saw the visually interesting but muddled Hugo last night, and it actually requires two haikus:

Clockwork world still lacks

heart-key: Méliès homage,

cameo-waste, fail.

Scorsese, French set

and names, talky scenes, smug nods,

require deep edits.

Cleanse the pallet: