Hugo

Yeah, yeah, its Martin Scorsese doing a 3-D kid's film about the wonder of cinema, lets all line up around the block and pay homage. Snark aside, the film is fine, though not as monumental as some of the hype (but not the box office) would suggest. It does try a little too hard to generate whimsy at times, and the Sascha Baren Cohen character is just a distraction, but overall its watchable, though I don't see it becoming an enduring holiday classic along the lines of Die Hard 2 or Rocky 4.

That said the film trotted out one trope that just annoys me every time I see it. At the very end one of the main character gets up to get a speech at an event meant to honor him. Now this event (a hog-tying ceremony) is attended by hundreds of people who undoubtedly paid a lot of money to go, so they have a reasonable expectation of some sort of coherent remarks. What they actually get is one of those speeches that exist solely in films, where the character gives a speech not only directed at one other character in the audience, but delivers it in such a manner that everyone else who hadn't been intimately involved in the plot for the last two hours would have been completely lost and have no idea of what he was talking about. It was basically something like this:

"Well I wouldn't be here tonight if it weren't for the courage of one person who did that one thing with the thing and then made a end around this other thing event though he wanted this thing. Now come and Dream with me.'

This is of course greeted with rapturous applause even though nobody there would have any idea what he was talking about. Its perfectly possible to give a speech thanking individual people while still being entertaining (as an example do not watch the Academy Award acceptance speeches). Just once I'd love a crowd in a movie to give ones that don't the tepid responses they actually deserve.