Scorsese shifts gears to tell story of film's early days

Beautiful to look at but oh-so-slow and lacking in heart, "Hugo" is one of those movies you wish were great. It is, at its best, a fable of how movies were invented and how they have changed the world. At its worst, it is heavy-handed and nap-inducing.

At the center of things is Hugo Cabret, an angelic boy who lives among the clocks in a Parisian train station in the early 1930s. He is trying to fix an automaton his father found long ago. His father is now deceased, and the automaton is his only connection to the past - and happiness.

Along the way, he learns that the grumpy old shopkeeper in the station (played by Ben Kingsley) is Georges Méliès, one of the great pioneers of early movies. The script has Méliès is as a long-forgotten genius who is finally recognized for his part in creating movies. We'd like to bow in worship, but the information given us in the movie doesn't warrant it.

This is an unusual effort for director Martin Scorsese whose films mostly have been about the mean streets. Who can forget the victim beaten to death with a baseball bat in "Goodfellas"? Or the young prostitute in "Taxi Driver"? Or the blood of "Raging Bull"? Now, as a total change, he has made what is billed as a children's movie.

"Hugo," though, faces an identity crisis. The studio has promoted it as a children's movie, but it actually is about film history and the love of film.

Be that as it may, "Hugo" is a stunning-looking movie that makes great use of 3-D. Instead of throwing objects at the audience, Scor-sese suggests depth by moving the camera through the sets. Awesome.

Asa Butterfield, assigned to the role of Hugo, is one of those child actors who is too precious for his own good. Scorsese became obsessed with close-ups of his eyes.

Strangely, the leading lady, Chloe Grace Moretz, changes size from scene to scene. She looks tall in one scene and petite in the next. One suspects that she was too tall for Hugo and the director tried to hide the fact with camera angles.

Sacha Baron Cohen is meant as comic relief, a Keystone Kops kind of bumbler obsessed with sending kids to orphanages. He's more repetitious than clever. Jude Law, in a signal that his romantic leading-man career is waning, has a bit part as the boy's father.

What we hoped for here was a movie like "Cinema Paradiso," which celebrated movies and their discovery by the young. "Hugo" goes for that kind of poignancy, and fails.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com