Welcome to Marwen (2018)

[baumer]

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[Webslinger]

Welcome to Marwen is fascinating in many ways – but mostly wrong ones. It’s the most dumbfounding talent-laden would-be-awards contender since Collateral Beauty, and while it’s not as bad as that film, it has so many bizarre creative choices and cringe-inducing moments that one wonders how so much talent would get behind it or why a major studio would bankroll it. The premise has potential and the film occasionally hones in on quietly moving human moments, but the animated subplots in which the dolls act the protagonist’s life out through a World War II lens become increasingly irritating and juvenile, culminating in a dreadful climax that trivializes the pivotal real world moment it’s supposed to represent. Steve Carell gamely does his best, but the script is so bizarrely focused on highlighting his eccentricities and problems in discerning fact from fiction that it constantly feels as though the filmmakers want viewers to pity his character rather than sympathize with him. His subplot with Leslie Mann – also a trooper for trying her best to bring humanity to an underwritten role – suffers from a painfully cringe-worthy event that stops the narrative dead in its tracks. Despite the film’s attempt to deliver some sense of catharsis in its third act, it falls short of its aims because the use of the dolls’ adventures as a fantastical allegory simplifies the drama in the real world to an absurd degree and makes the epiphanies Carell’s character experiences feel entirely forced. That a film like this one exists does not surprise me – it fits right in with the kitsch one would find on the Hallmark Channel, albeit with better production values and a few more affecting scenes here and there. What does surprise me is that it’s the work of Robert Zemeckis, who is usually such an expert at making visually dynamic and emotionally resonant dramas even when the scripts might seem a tad too sentimental. What’s on display here, however, just begs the question of what the filmmakers were thinking. 

 

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