Just the Ticket #12: Hugo Your Way, I'll Go Mine

Having read other reviews prior to seeing Hugo, and being disenchanted and bludgeoned to indifference by the trailer for the film, I was understatedly reluctant to watch Martin Scorcese's adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which I later discovered, via segments of 60 Minutes and the 2012 Oscars, was not merely another boy-meets-robot-and-has-fun tale, but an engaging mystery of sorts revolving around the creation of film in the earliest days of cinema.
Son and apprentice to a deceased clock-maker (Jude Law), Hugo goes to live and work with his uncle (Ray Winstone, London Boulevard) as clock-winder in a Paris train station. Accompanying Hugo (and setting off the mystery) is a broken automaton which Hugo has been trying to fix with parts he steals from a local toy dealer (Ben Kingsley). Master of disguise Sacha Baron Cohen provides many of the film's laughs as a station security officer in pursuit of Hugo and the affections of flowershop owner Emily Mortimer (City Island).
Contrary to popular critical opinion, the visuals--while spectacular--do not detract from the presentation of the story or the audience's participation in the mystery, however child- and family-oriented they may be. The 3D effects were spot-on, neither unnoticable in two dimensions nor prominent to the point of obvious fakery. Hugo is a motion picture in the literal sense; every frame looks as if it were hand-painted artwork, waiting (much as the film's automaton had been) in anticipation of the day it would be animated by magic or machinery.
Thanks in part to the legendary directing prowess of Martin Scorcese and his skilled cast and crew, what could have been a mere piece of juvenile eye-candy has become a modern journey of nostalgia that bridges the generation gap with its charm and wit.
A