It’s very rarely the case that my take on a movie so drastically contradicts the general critical consensus. But it’s kind of fun when it does. I’d heard some interesting things about “Hugo,” a children’s movie (more or less) made by a director known for making decidedly un-children movies, Martin Scorcese. I entered with reasonable expectations. I left relieved simply that the movie was over. I can’t really understate this: “Hugo” is one of the most boring films I’ve seen in a long time.

The story is that of Hugo Cabret, the orphaned son of a clockmaker who has managed to evade attention by living inside the walls and clock structures of a Parisian train station. He’s supposed to be wry and clever. I suspect he’s even supposed to be likeable. Precocious, however, he was not. I’d put the performance somewhere closer to Jake Lloyd’s screen time in “Episode I - The Phantom Menace.”

The big mystery that supposedly props up the film is what will happen when a special key is inserted into a little metal wind-up man (the automaton), who will write or draw something meaningful, if and when that key is found. I have no qualms just laying this out there: the key lives around the neck of the granddaughter (Chloe Grace Moretz) of the man at the end of the line (Ben Kingsley). Let me explain.

Somewhere along the way, we learn that this automaton was found by the boy’s father in storage at a museum. He retrieved it and restored it for the most part, dying in a fire before he was able to finish the job. Some time later, the key falls conveniently into Hugo’s hands, the robot draws a picture and signs it Georges Melies (Kingsley), and we’re launched into what becomes something like half an hour of back story about how Melies used to make movies...and then stopped. Tragic.

It was about as engaging as a plumbing program on one of those home improvement channels and about one-tenth as informative. The story is told, the old man’s heart is warmed, and everyone dances the night away in a final scene that feels ripped (and poorly so) straight from the end of a Wes Anderson flick.

People will tell you the 3-D aspects of the film are worthy of merit. I will admit freely I went out of my way to catch a showing that was not in 3-D. Remember how they made all the best movies of all time (many of which are Scorcese’s doing), and not a single one of them was in 3-D? Exactly.

Any mild chuckles elicited by Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays the eccentric and mildly maniacal train station inspector, are muted and ultimately snuffed out by the utterly squandered talents of Moretz (“Kick-Ass,” “500 Days of Summer”) and Emily Mortimer (“Our Idiot Brother”). Like the rest of the film, their performances are bland and tasteless, stuck under a dingy sheen of a plot and a bunch of goofy visual effects.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a real clunker, and despite the multitude of critics who’ve praised “Hugo” for its innocent charm and homage to the earliest stages of movie-making, I have to stick to my guns. It simply wasn’t good. After all, I have no real reason to kiss Scorcese’s ass – there’s no way he’ll ever read this.

My rating: 4 out of 10.