Halfway through Martin Scorsese's stylish dabble into children's fantasy, the narrative screeches to a halt and heads off in another direction, as if the director wanted to play in a toy box of his own.
Explaining the switch in the quest - from repairing an automaton to repairing an old man - would give away the (cracking) central twist.
However, the result is a visual nostalgia-fest as the glorious pioneering years of cinema are brought splendidly to life.
At one point young Hugo dangles from a clock hand, a la Harold Lloyd, and the ground-breaking L'Arrivee d'un Train En Gare - which had the first cinema goers running for their lives - is re-imagined, the 3D aiming to recreate the sense of intrusion that so scared those early viewers.
The setting for Hugo is a Paris train station, exquisitely realised, magically flecked by snow, shrouded in steam and dotted with delightful eccentrics such as Richard Griffiths' and Frances De La Tour's star-crossed pals.
At the outset, then, there are few clues that this will be a mature exploration of regret and bitterness.
Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is a cross between the Artful Dodger, Jonathan Creek and Quasimodo. He lives in the walls of the station, keeping the clocks running so no-one figures out his drunken guardian (Ray Winstone) has long gone.
He ducks and dives through vast cogs and nips behind grates and scurries up echoing spiral staircases to avoid the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) and the dread prospect of life in an orphanage.
His father (Jude Law) died leaving Hugo a half-finished automaton which the boy repairs, stealing parts from the toy shop of a mean old Georges Melies (Ben Kingsley) in the hope that a functioning mechanical man will, somehow, restore his father.
Georges' young god-daughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz) wears the key to the automaton around her neck and the pair's discovery of each other and this curious fact unlocks the adventure.
At that point the production suddenly puts away childish things.
As a result, this is far from the film it could have been. Sacha Baron Cohen, for example, doesn't settle into his role until well after his charmless slapstick has overstayed its welcome.
Meanwhile, the 3D is ghastly in places. Things are thrust so far into the foreground that they become as insubstantial as ghosts and the placing of props and people to engineer a 3D-scape ensures that the immersive experience is not only fragmented but destroyed.
Added to that, the slow, mournful tone is far from the adventure repeatedly promised by Isabelle.
Indeed, it is not entirely clear who the target audience is because there are few concessions to a younger crowd.
It's very long, suffused with middle-aged regret and there's a lot of tell and not much show. Maybe one for those dads who become moist-eyed at Meccano.
– From December 2011
