"I Was Beaten Up Because I Was Different, So I've Built A Place Where I Can Heal..."
Inspired by the life and artistic works of Mark Hogancamp, who in Kingston, New York on April 2000 was left with severe life changing injuries and little memory of his previous life after being the victim of a vicious and brutal hate crime, Welcome to Marwen takes inspiration from the 2010 documentary, Marwencol, from independent filmmaker, Jeff Malmberg, which focused on the titular 1/6 scale World War II-era model town embodied by a collection of handcrafted dolls all designed with an uncanny resemblance to Hogancamp himself, his close friends and his now incarcerated attackers. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump) whose recent cinematic output has been somewhat rather patchy, with the likes of Allied and The Walk by no means reaching the lofty filmic heights the American is best known for, Welcome to Marwen blends a soppy, emotional drama with oddball digital effects for a movie which cannot decide whatsoever what it wants to be, resulting in a final picture that on the one hand does feel considerably admirable considering the heartbreaking true story sitting at the heart of the drama, yet on the other, does feel entirely misguided and just way too experimental for a picture that due to having Zemeckis' name stamped all over it, will arrive with certain high expectations from critics and audiences alike.
Perhaps the best way to review Welcome to Marwen is to critique the movie in the two separate halves the film plays out against, with one half the grounded, real-life drama focusing on the life of Steve Carrell's (The Big Short) Hogancamp set during the aftermath of his vicious assault, and the second half whereby Zemeckis returns to his well-known knack for digital effects with a particular narrative which sees the Hogancamp crafted dolls come to life and play out WWII style fantasies, all with on-the-nose modes of symbolism which mirror the horrors and fears of Hogancamp's scarred mind. Whilst the approach is bold and the digital effects are impressive, blending a mix of Anomalisa inspired visual imagery with weird, off-beat action set pieces which seem to have fallen right out of the Team America textbook, Welcome to Marwen still fails to really have the desired impact the filmmakers were obviously intending, with the sensibility of the movie falling too heavy on the schmaltzy in regards to the true-life drama, even with yet another rather impressive dramatic lead performance from Carrell, whilst becoming more and more alienating and irritating each time we are dragged back to the world of the digital dolls, which even after the second time when the point becomes abundantly clear, just feels repetitive and come the end of it, rather quite pointless. With an over-exaggerated runtime, some sloppy and misjudged casting choices, with the awfully accented Gwendoline Christie (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) the prime example, and an overarching stench of sticky sentimentality, Welcome to Marwen is unfortunately the first ripe dud of the year. We expect better Zemeckis!
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