‘Welcome To Marwen’: Robert Zemeckis Crafts A Laughable After School Fairy Tale Special About Trauma [Review]

Based on the story of a man beaten so mercilessly he had to construct a fantasy world in order to survive his great pain and suffering, Robert Zemeckis’ insipid “Welcome To Marwen” is a painfully schmaltzy misjudged disaster, and superficial retelling that dishonors a layered and agonizing story about trauma. Inspired by the true story told in Jeff Malmberg‘s “Marewencol,” Zemeckis’ movie takes its cues from that doc, almost note for note in many instances, but comes out the other end with a sentimental, shallow, and fatuous reading of the doc’s inspiring story of recovery and resilience.

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In “Welcome To Marwen,” Steve Carell plays Mark Hogancamp, an illustrator who is left brain-damaged and broke following a vicious attack that left him in a coma and without memory. Having to relearn to speak, walk, write, and other basic human functions, when he is released from holistic therapy and returns home, he seeks solace and recovery in Marwen (eventually Marwencol), a 1/6th scale fictional World War II-era, Belgian-set town he creates in his backyard with its own richly-detailed history, characters, and mythology. Therein, the emotionally broken, PTSD-suffering Hogancamp recreates himself as a heroic WWII pilot that kicks Nazi ass. Marwen also mirrors his real life as a cook at a bar and features several female soldiers based on many of the women he works and interacts with and has crushes on in real life (characters played Merritt Wever, Janelle Monáe, Eiza González, Gwendoline Christie). One of the cardinal rules of Marwen is that Hogancamp’s heroic alter-ego cannot get too close to any of the women in the town or Deja Thoris (Diane Kruger), the Belgian Witch of the fictional Marwen, will eradicate them all with a Thanos-like dusting.

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But all this is contextual backstory. ‘Marwen’ starts in media res, right in the heart of Mark’s fantasies—Zemeckis using his patented motion-capture technology to transform Carell and the other characters into action figure versions of themselves that fly planes, shoot guns, and defeat Nazis with storylines that eventually skew towards the romantic (with hints of sexual kink and fetish). Throughout these adventures, Hogancamp is the opposite of his timid, frightened self (and in this sense, Carell and most of the other actors play two different roles); a tough guy, wisecracking hero surrounded by “dames,” his own confidence, and boundless imagination. But he is haunted both literally and figuratively by Deja Thoris, constantly threatening to undermine his fantasy (she ends up a hilariously bad metaphor for something that I won’t spoil, but is literally spelled out by the characters that essentially scream, “Oh no, you’re the BAD GUY!”).

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Two circumstances drive the sluggish narrative of ‘Marwen,’ the emergence of Nicol (Leslie Mann), Hogancamp’s kind and compassionate neighbor, and the looming sentencing date for the men that assaulted him. Hogancamp is asked to speak at the judgment hearing, his friends insisting he must face his attackers and his lawyer maintaining his appearance and words should help sway the judge to throw the book at these goons.

Yet, the director seems to have suffered his own form of brain damage too. So many moments of the hackneyed ‘Marwen’ are excruciatingly miscalculated and Zemeckis seems to have lost all sense of tone and taste in the last few years (even his purportedly back to basics “Flight” drama with Denzel Washington is a deeply shallow portrait of addiction). ‘Marwen,’ is always simplistic, banal, corny, unintentionally funny and basic af. Functioning similarly to a musical, PTSD flashbacks of pain are excuses for Zemeckis to launch into ridiculously loud and noisy action sequences. ‘Marwen’ feels like a movie about a man and his toys made by a man who loves to play with toys (VFX, mo-cap, etc.). In Zemeckis’ hands, trauma isn’t an emotional condition to explore or consider carefully, it’s a launching pad to blow shit up with this always-evolving, revolutionary technology (there’s a whole meta-“Back To The Future” action sequence in the senseless third act which literally factors in a flying LEGO ship that can travel to the future with the same rules and regs of Zemeckis’ classic, but it is so asinine, it’s pointless to detail here).

‘Marwen’ also seems tailored for farsighted audiences and/or made for that not-always-lucid grandparent that needs a helping hand and instructions repeated over and over again. So many moments of the film insult basic intelligence, underline the obvious, and spoon-feed you information as if you’re an idiot who cannot trust their own eyes and brain. Literally pointing to close-shots of elements you’re supposed to see and understand over and over again as if you’re a dummy who might not get it. There are too many foolish instances to point out, but ‘Marwen’ is the type of movie that plays Ted Nugent‘s “Cat Scratch Fever” to signal to the audience, in an already ominously-composed shot, that here comes the bad guy and you should be wary of him.

While the movie features big, expensive effects likely difficult to pull off, nothing hides the fact that ‘Marwen’ looks impossibly silly, ridiculous and it’s hard to empathize with something you can’t take seriously. Zemeckis does (sometimes awkwardly) acknowledge Hogancamp’s kinks and fetishes—he was assaulted in the first place for admitting to enjoying wearing women’s shoes—and at the same time, the underlying sexual nature of his fantasy world (made more explicit in the documentary) is glossed over. And yet, this is at the end of the day, the least of the tonally calamitous movie’s worries (also, find a moment to pity Alan Silvestri melodramatic score which always sounds foolish in this context).

Following 2015’s “The Walk, a live-action adaptation of James Marsh‘s riveting “Man On Wire,” Zemeckis seems clearly preoccupied with the idea of transforming documentary portraits into larger-than-life big-screen spectacles, but so far he is zero for two with this genre. One might politely suggest abandoning the idea, but Zemeckis’ problems are bigger, far-reaching, and fundamentally unsound; his imagination may be out-sized, but his ideas are deeply misguided and there’s clearly no cure for bad judgment. “Welcome To Marwen” is rife with a box of chocolate platitudes and his glib, hallmark “Forrest Gump“-y sensibilities treat the idea of emotional and psychological trauma like an embarrassing after-school fairy tale special that’s hard to watch. [D-]