Film Review by Regina Robbins
There are many reasons that Hugo is a major film event. The book on which it is based, Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret, caused a sensation upon its release four years ago: it’s a whopping 526 pages which combine text and pictures, and won the Caldecott Medal for illustration, never before awarded to a novel. Because of this unique form, and because its plot is intimately tied to the history of cinema itself, the book practically cries out to be filmed. So it’s obvious why Martin Scorsese, best known for his tableaux of New York’s underbelly, was attracted to the project. The 69-year-old auteur makes his “family film” debut with a movie one might have expected to be made by Tim Burton or Jean-Pierre Jeunet (or, God help us, Robert Zemeckis). Just to make things even more mind-blowing, he shot in 3D.
