Hugo (2011)

IMDb Listing
This comes disguised as a children’s film and marketed accordingly, but in actuality it’s an intensely personal film by Scorsese. It’s about Hugo Cabret (played by Asa Butterfield), an orphan who lives in the clock tower of a 1930s Paris train station, trying to fix the mechanical man that his father left behind when he died. I knew little of the film’s plot going in, and I was amazed at the unexpected directions that the story takes, eventually encompassing the very origins of cinema itself. There are a number of performances here that I admired, such as those by Ben Kingsley, Chloë Grace Moretz, Michael Stuhlbarg, and even Sacha Baron Cohen in a broadly comic and slightly menacing role as the station’s police inspector. Some of the more standard children’s movie elements, such as the chase scenes through the train station, feel uninspired, but even still the movie is beautifully shot and of course Scorsese’s typical technical mastery is on display. What stays with me more than anything, though, is how terrifically warm-hearted the movie is for a film that is in a lot of ways about disappointment and grief. It’s not one of the great movies of Scorsese’s career, but it’s one of the most lovingly made and one of the most purely enjoyable. 9/10

The Muppets (2011)

IMDb Listing
I’ve always had a take-’em-or-leave-’em attitude towards the Muppets. I remember them from my childhood, of course, but I don’t remember them all that well, and I’m not sure I’ve seen any of their movies start-to-finish except the first one. So, I acknowledge up front that I’m not the target audience here, but I still think it’s a disappointing film. Star Jason Segal also wrote the script (with Nicholas Stoller), and they’ve written a movie that feels a lot like a fan tribute. They go out of their way – again and again – to point out that the Muppets haven’t been popular for decades, and it’s clear that they’re aching in their souls to reintoduce the gang to today’s audiences. But they settle on a story structure that’s poorly suited to do this, because this isn’t a movie about the Muppets at all. Instead it’s about Segal’s character, his girlfriend (Amy Adams), and his Muppet brother, and how these three fit in with the world of Muppets. As a result, the Muppets themselves get short shrift, with only Kermit, Fozzie, and to some degree Miss Piggy factoring into the story except as glorified extras, and even then only passively. It’s a good-natured and sincere effort, and I find it hard to have any actual hard feelings toward it. But too many of the comedy bits fall flat, and the human characters are awfully dull for having so much of the movie’s attention devoted to them. 6/10