User reviews

Mark, after nearly being beaten to death, escapes into a fantasy world of dolls in a World War 2 setting he can control.

First off this is very slow and considered. The single goal of the story is to get Mark to attend a court date - that is it. But of course for him this is a herculean effort.

The characters are great, the action elements in the fantasy world are vivid and punchy and injects a bit of motion into a very sedate movie. Like "Sucker Punch" it gets a little bit repetitive as every problem Mark faces he retreats into his fantasy world.

Carell steps off the gas to give a heart felt performance, Leslie Mann does what she excels at: being desirable yet approachable. Merritt Wever holds it all together with an understated performance and she was my favourite character.

This isn't laugh-out-loud funny but it isn't as depressing as it might sound.

The only point I didn't like was that it framed Mark's attack as an encounter by strangers - which wasn't quite true. He was drinking with his attackers, otherwise they would know nothing about him. I felt like the writers were afraid an audience would lose sympathy for him if he knew his attackers in anyway. But I feel to the contrary: if some stranger attacks you just for being you there is little you can do about that - but if your actions put you into a situation that goes badly, then you are left wondering if it was somehow your fault, even if you are not to blame. Once I knew this I suddenly understood why the main character just couldn't move on and was stuck in a loop.

A very enjoyable, different film, a great watch but you will need patience and focus or this is going to feel long.

Ok I've read a lot of reviews calling this movie a disaster and such, but I have to say I really enjoyed this movie! There were definitely some plot errors and some awkward writing points but I really wnjoyed the story and the cinematography was beautiful. The transitions between the real world and the doll world were flawless. Please give this movie a chance and make up your own mind about it.

Before I saw WELCOME TO MARWEN, I saw a tweet calling it "Zemeckis' VERTIGO." Although I scoffed at the idea, after viewing it, I realized that it held some merit, with one of the female characters, played by Merritt Wever, eerily inhabiting a very similar role to that of Barbara Bel Geddes. There are some interesting ideas on display throughout the film that mirror themes found in VERTIGO, as both focus on men attempting to move past a traumatic experience. However, the men in both films elect to move past this trauma by shaping the females around them in their own desired image. It worked in VERTIGO, but 60 years removed from that film, such a premise seems tone-deaf to say the least. Furthermore, Zemeckis' latest film will no doubt serve as further evidence for the group of critics that peg him as a filmmaker primarily interested in the latest special effects rather than one primarily interested in telling a story. Zemeckis seems like an odd choice to helm this film, as he never opts for a subtle, tender approach to telling the story of Steve Carrell's Mark Hogancamp, who was assaulted by a group of white supremacists. Instead, Zemeckis opts to place the film's visual effects at the forefront, and electing to focus on shootouts and explosions rather than a more nuanced exploration of Hogancamp's fragile psychological state. That the film also revels in some more obvious instances of male "gaziness" when it shows some of the animated female doll figures topless is worthy of an eye-roll, to say the least.

That being said, I truly do think that Steve Carrell delivers a better performance here than most will give him credit for. When the script, written by Zemeckis and Caroline Thompson, isn't actively attempting to display the film's special effects (or having Carrell deliver some truly awful lines about the "essence of a woman"), Carrell does at least attempt to understand the struggles that his character's real-life counterpart underwent after the assault. The majority of the cast (even Leslie Mann, whose character unfortunately follows the manic pixie dream girl stereotype) also delivers some solid work, especially the aforementioned Wever. That being said, watching WELCOME TO MARWEN left me thinking that this was a story that didn't necessarily need to be made into a film, especially when a critically-acclaimed documentary about Hogancamp himself named MARWENCOL already exists.

I don't understand why the reviews are so bad. This is an original, unique story based on real events (that isn't a remake or a superhero movie) that I wouldn't have known about were it not for this film. I also liked the animation used to tell Mark's story. Sure, some of the dialogue wasn't great and the writing could have been better, but it didn't ruin the experience for me, or the rest of my life for that matter. Anyway, don't take my word for it or anyone else's, see for yourself because movies like this are rare nowadays.

After drunkenly confessing a love of wearing stiletto heels, comic book artist Mark Hogancamp is gay-bashed (ironically, he is not gay). The attack leaves him with what I (not a medical person) assume is brain damage, of which one effect is the loss of his drawing ability. Denied that, instead he channels his artistic leanings into constructing in his garden a World War Two Belgian village, populated with an Action Man-like doll as his own alter-ego, war hero "Cap'n Hogie" (who wears stilettos to "feel the essence of Dame"), and Sindy- or Barbie-like dolls representing various women in his life (his care assistant, a friendly woman in a hobby shop, a pornographic actress...) Using these dolls - often in scenes in which Hogie, captured by Nazis (representing Mark's assailants), is rescued by the women - Mark works through his personal demons and his photographs of the scenes give him a second artistic career. But his emotional equilibrium is threatened both by the arrival of kindly neighbour Nicol (who, somewhat unbelievably, does not find it remotely creepy when Mark immediately gives her her own doll equivalent in Marwen) and also by Deva the mysterious evil Belgian witch doll...

This is based on a true story, which may explain why we are spared the usual melodrama in which Mark's awful ordeal would usually be portrayed. Instead, he is presented as someone whose life has been severely affected by his assault, but who, as anyone would, is trying to cope and put his life back together: a couple of shouty episodes aside, he is a subdued, but not totally withdrawn, character. This, however, seems to result in a patchy performance from lead Steve Carell (in what I cynically imagine is the kind of role actors accept in the hope it will bag them an Oscar): whereas he is suitably gung-ho when voicing Hogie, as Mark I found his performance curiously detached. Of the other performances, the stand-out is Gwendoline Christie, but not in a good way: her Russian care assistant is so over-the-top it is as if she has just wandered in from a 'Carry on' film - it says a lot about her performance that she is more realistic when portraying a plastic doll.

Speaking of plastic dolls, the animated/CGI sequences are nicely done, both technically and also in injecting a little bit of humour into the film, while never swamping its central message of a man being forced to adapt to a change of circumstances that is not his fault. Ultimately, however, the quieter, real-life sequences - human interest drama I would usually appreciate - suffer in contrast to the colourful animated bits and I left the cinema undecided as to whether I had actually enjoyed the film or not.

Took two guys and two girls to this show. One guy fell asleep. One said it was ok. And the two girls liked it. It was sad, and crazy how a trauma can affect someone this way. I thought the movie looked neat. And I thought the acting was good. I don't know why the ratings are so bad for this show. I liked it

I'm not even going to try to explain what it's about maybe because I'm not sure of it myself. Pain plays a central part in this Zemeckian experiment. And Zemeckis has taken me to the most unexpected worlds through imaginative and sometimes downright revolutionary visual feasts. Just think Return To The Future or Forrest Gump. Here we're not allowed to get close to our hero. Everything seems to be detached emotionally and every attempt to get closer is translated into sentimentality. It just doesn't quite work. My favorite of all Zemeckias films is, without question, Death Becomes Her the one of his films that gets better and better with the passing of time. Special effects age but not if they are intimately connected to the progress of the story and are based on multidimensional characters, Death Becomes Her is a perfect example of that. Welcome to Marwen is an interesting experiment but unfortunately it stands cold and distant.

Mark was a high school classmate of mine and good friend. He had so much raw talent as an artist and made everyone laugh. The hate that wrecked his life was transformed into art like we have never seen.

It's unusual for me to go into a film knowing so little about it: no trailers other than a snippet that showed it was Steve Carell starring and appearing as a plastic figure of himself. That's it. Period. After watching the film this evening, I've been astonished to see that it has TOTALLY BOMBED at its opening weekend in the US. Because personally I really enjoyed it.

For once, I'm not going to go near the plot, since going into this movie cold was a genuine pleasure. All I'll do is set up the situation: that Steve Carrell plays Mark Hogancamp who is an artist who's constructed a model installation of a WWII Belgian town - Marwen - in his back-yard. Against this backdrop he is photographing epic WWII encounters between his plastic alter-ego, Captain Hogie, and various other figures, some friend, some foe.

It sounds completely bonkers. And indeed it is. For the first quarter of the film, I was really trying to grasp whether I should be reaching for a very low IMDB rating or not. But the screenplay, by director Robert Zemeckis and "Edward Scissorhands" writer Caroline Thompson, is clever in only disclosing its hand slowly and with the minimum of exposition. For me, the very best sort of storytelling. (Even at the end of the film there were some elements of the story still left unexplained... who, for example, was Deja Thoris (Diane Kruger) based on? I can guess... but only guess). Gradually the pieces of the jigsaw came together and I started to warm to it more.

But then something odd happened. Steve Carell got in my head. I suddenly got 100% invested in what happened to Mark to the point where - with a car tyre involved... you'll know the bit - I suddenly realised I was sat bolt upright on the edge of my cinema seat. I don't get that level of emotional engagement that often.

Carell is without doubt a superb actor. We saw it with "Foxcatcher". I've seen it again in the (soon to be UK-released) "Beautiful Boy". Here he delivers what I think is an EXTRAORDINARY performance: and if it wasn't for the sniffy reviews, and the bad box office word of mouth I feel Carell should surely have been - no pun intended - a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination.

Elsewhere in the cast, most of the other characters - many female (it's certainly not the most on-trend politically correct movie!) - spend most of their time in plastic form, so it's difficult to comment on their performances. But the talented combination of Janelle Monáe, Gwendoline Christie, Eiza González (from "Baby Driver"), the statuesque Stefanie von Pfetten and Diane Kruger all turn up. Getting the most 'real world' screen-time though is Leslie Mann as Mark's new neighbour Nicol ("without the e"). And very good she is too.

The repeated and seamless flips between the real-world and Marwen are artfully done and the plastic characters are beautifully realised. Yes, it's CGI but its really cleverly done CGI. A delicate balance between the photo-realism of Pixar and the clunky puppetry of Team America.

We even dip in at one point to some full on Sci-Fi where Zemeckis can't help but delve into an aspect of his past filmography: scenes that made me laugh out loud.

One of the benefits of the model scenes is that they can get away with some pretty extreme puppet-on-puppet violence that would have definitely not got it a UK-12A certificate otherwise! A shout out also to Zemeckis-regular Alan Silvestri, who delivers a lovely soundtrack including a really cheeky Great-Escapesque little motif.

I've praised the screenplay for its reserve and intelligence, but on the flip-side there are a number of elements that don't sit well: There are a few extremely dodgy lines that jerk you out of the story (and I'm not talking about the deliberately tongue-in-cheek ones, as many of them are); some of the humour (and there are some good gags in here) seems somewhat misplaced within the overall tone of the film; the film verges towards the overly melodramatic at times, bringing to my mind the old Harrison Ford flick "Regarding Henry"; and a few of the characters seem to be messily discarded without further comment (Nicol's 'boyfriend' Kurt (Neil Jackson) for example).

I didn't pay much attention to the opening statement on the screen. Which made the closing caption, after so much fantasy, act as a stun grenade on me. Mark Hogancamp is a real American, and the film is based on real events! There is a 2010 documentary based on the guy called "Marwencol" which I haven't seen but would like to: many people on the internet rave about it. This seems to be part of the negative reaction: many who love the documentary don't want to see the memory sullied by a dramatic work of fiction.

But I really enjoyed this one. It has its flaws, sure, but my rating completely ignores the critics and the public view (which irritatingly seems to be largely based on "word of mouth" - what an evil phrase - rather than people who've ACTUALLY SEEN IT). My recommendation would be to ignore the bad press, go see it, get through the first quarter with your mouth agape ("We are not a codfish Michael") and then go to One Mann's Movies and tell me what YOU thought.

(For teh full graphical review, go to One Mann's Movies on the web or Facebook. Thanks).

Is Zemeckis' new thing to turn critically acclaimed documentaries into narrative films. While The Walk (based off of Man on Wire) is a decent movie, I just never felt anything with this film. It felt like a shell of the original documentary.

If anyone is interested in seeing the good version of the film, the film is based off the documentary Marwencol, which is excellent.

Has some similarities to Forty Year Old Virgin, from 2005, which also starred Carell. A tale of a guy lacking confidence. Who works through his issues using small figurines. Welcome to Marwen seems to be a remake of Marwencol (2010), an an actual autobio by.... Mark Hogancamp himself! In Welcome to .... Carell plays Mark Hogancamp, who is represented by the action figure Captain Hogie when he's filming. Confused yet? Clearly, the human Hogancamp has PTSD or some emotional issues afer "the attack", and building/filming the action figures is how he deals with it; fun miniature cities and details. Of course, they are playing "Crazy", by Patsy Recline in the background. Marwencol has an entry in wikipedia, where you can find Mark's actual story, and what led him to build the miniature city. Neighbor Nicol (Leslie Mann) is very sweet, but her husband is a jerk. Leslie Mann was also in Forty Year Old Virgin. Friend Wendy is played by Stefanie von Pfetten. It's a cute, heartfelt story. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, who didn't direct either of the other films discussed earlier.

Welcome to Marwen is brought to us by the director by the director of Forrest Gump, the BTTF trilogy and many other great movies and tells the story based around Mark Hogancamp and the fictional town of Marwen.

Regardless of whether or not it tells the full, non-fiction story or one based on it, I was mostly pretty impressed with this movie, although there are some elements that it could've improved on.

This movie presents a compelling story about a man who has lost nearly everything in his life and uses model homes and dolls to create a story as a coping mechanism. I find this to be a very intriguing idea for a story because it presents the audience with a way to look into Mark's past and his trauma. For the most part I think they handled it pretty well, where it is done mostly with visuals, and I think this is the film's strongest element. Steve Carell is fantastic in this film in his portrayal of Mark. He makes the character feel believable through his facial expressions, actions and dialogue. He gives off a good impression of what someone with PTSD is like and I think that's another one of the best things about the film. Finally, the CGI for the dolls was a dazzling sight to behold. I know it's nothing new considering that we got this in movies like the Toy Story franchise, but I really enjoy the way Zemeckis presents the world of Marwen as how it feels like this miniature world. To me, it wouldn't be surprising if the CG effects used was motion capture considering that the director worked with it in the past.

As someone who is not familiar with the real story, I will say that the movie is still not without its flaws, and its biggest one would have to be the plot structure. The movie revolves around two plots, the A plot, which looks at Mark's struggle with PTSD and the B plot, which revolves around Marwen. These two plots are both there, but it doesn't feel like there's much of a connection between the two. I mean, yes, both plots connect a few times in the movie, but by the resolution there doesn't seem to be much of a means where these plots come together. They just feel separate throughout nearly the entire film. I also found the ending to be rushed; it feels like the movie was nearing its runtime and they just somewhat crammed the remainder of it into the last 5 minutes of the movie.

Regardless, I did enjoy my time seeing this despite the narrative flaws that really drag it down.

5/10

It's probably necessary to watch the documentary about this story before watching Welcome to Marwen. So much is left out and/or incorrect that it makes the plot feel strange. I also feel like the story is told in a way that makes people less sympathetic for Mark. The movie focuses so much on awkward sexual things about Mark's art or life that it kind of paints him out to be a pervert. His obsession with women's shoes and their "essence" also seems incorrect. I'm also not fond of making his addiction into a doll and having that doll be the villain. Overall, Welcome to Marwen isn't a great movie. Steve Carell does a great job, but everything else is really just lackluster. I really had high hopes this could be up for an Academy Award, but I don't think that's going to happen now.

Hollywood did it again and not in a good way. Another missed opportunity to show a powerful true story and instead they decided to bring Disneyland to the big screen which simple doesn't play with this particular storyline. My sister sufferers from a TBI after surviving a horrible car accident. A couple years back we picked up Regarding Henry and it annoyed her, it annoyed all of us that are close to her and that help take care of her, the way that film sugar coated TBI, well this film not only sugar coats TBI, it Willy Wonka's it. TBIs are ugly, devastating, messy and brutal for the one suffering from it and their caregivers. Yet they are invisible to others. Often times you'll never be able to tell by looking at someone that have a TBI, yet them and their loved ones are going through a living hell.

If any of you actually care about Traumatic Brain Injures and the 10s of millions it affects, check out the film Every 21 Seconds starring Shannon Brown and Kelly Thiebaud. I mention the lead actors names simply because these two deliver performances that perfectly capture what it's like to have a TBI (Brown) and how challenging it is to be the primary caregiver (Thiebaud) to someone with this horrible condition. Brown is captivating as the main character who suffers from a TBI, honestly one of the best performances you'll ever see in any movie period.

Similar to Welcome to Marwen, Every 21 Seconds is based on the true story of TBI survivor who also suffered his injury due to being assaulted unjustly. I stumbled across 21 when it was in theaters earlier this year in Chicago. I was floored by not only the performances of the leads, but also the authenticity and rawness of the film itself. I picked up my sister and brought her back that same day to watch a later showing. It was very emotional for her to watch it, at the end she had tears of joy, saying that this film perfectly captures the struggles of someone suffering from a TBI.

I guess we were hoping a bigger budget film like Marwen would take advantage of this great opportunity to put an authentic mainstream film out there really highlighting this devastating condition, sadly they did not.

I've never been let down more by a movie. I was waiting for it to be as captivating as the trailers and it just dragged on awkwardly the whole time. I may be missing something, I don't know, but I absolutely considered leaving the show.

Not great movie, but my wife and I enjoyed it and laughed and moved emotionally. Not all movies can do that.

One of Hollywood's most esteemed directors, and for good reason, we have now entered into a sad phase of Robert Zemeckis's career where we have no idea what type of film we will be getting from the man responsible for such gems as Forrest Gump, Back to the Future or Cast Away.

It's a Jekyll and Hyde scenario, one that leans more towards Hyde since the early 2000's, with Zemeckis unable to restrain himself from trying out risky propositions, in films that have leaned more towards visual boundary pushing rather than good old fashioned story-telling or character development.

Since the joys of Cast Away in 2000, Zemeckis has delivered such forgettable outings as The Polar Express (a motion capture experiment), Beowulf and A Christmas Carol (ditto for CGI experiments) and hard dramas Flight, The Walk and Allied, with only Flight offering any real truly redeeming qualities in the memorability stakes, thanks largely to Denzel Washington's impressive lead turn, with Zemeckis's newest CGI/Drama experiment Welcome to Marwen one of his most terrifying misfires yet.

Based on the seriously good 2010 documentary Marwencol, that examined the life of traumatized artist Mark Hogancamp and his artistic endeavors after a life changing and violent attack, Marwen's ambition comes from a good place and one that seems ripe for exploring but with Zemeckis struggling to work off a script he developed alongside Caroline Thompson that uneasily balances Mark's doll-centric imagination with an incredibly bland real life arc around it, Marwen is sadly deserving of many of the critical blasting's it got given upon its dire box office run over the Christmas period.

Nothing feels natural or earned here, Mark as played by the Oscar seeking Steve Carell is a hard person to fully engage with while his Nazi filled doll world is mostly just cringeworthy, even if some of the CGI work is impressive in a forgettable way, while the less said about Mark's generic love interests and friendships that pop up in the real world courtesy of Leslie Mann's Nicol and Merritt Wever's kindly hobby store manager Roberta the better.

For a story dealing with trauma, love, loss and art, Marwen fails to inspire much in any of its facets, Zemeckis unable to transplant any of his many years of experience into a dull and dry tale that was crying out for some type of spark, with Carell in particular feeling somewhat miscast in another one of his softly spoken and rather lifeless dramatic portrayals that are starting to wear a little thin based on current form.

Another hugely annoying component of the oddball Marwen is the insistent and grating score from the very talented Alan Silvestri.

Having worked with Zemeckis before to great results in the likes of Forrest Gump and Cast Away, Silvestri's off-putting musical cues and overly chaotic music doesn't help the films causes in any way shape or form and when things are supposed to be touching or moving, the score will no doubt take you right out of the moment, disallowing the film any slight chance it had of connecting on an emotional level.

Final Say -

There's some interesting questions asked in Welcome to Marwen but don't expect to have any of them answered in Zemeckis's messy and misguided outing. A frequently odd hybrid, you're far better of tracking down a copy of doco Marwencol than investing two hours of your life into this misfire.

1 ½ pairs of high-heels out of 5

...somebody dares to think outside the box in this day and age. Thank you Robert Zemeckis for daring to push the envelope and revealing more of the ongoings in the human mind than most documentaries are able.

This is an extraordinarily grown up film - skilfully portraying the workings of the inner mind. Trusting the audience to stay in touch with their younger self, to receive the message, is a mind twistingingly daring approach to great film making.

Arguably skipping the BOATS (Based On A True Story) aspect and tweaking the script into pure fiction would have been beneficial to the broader audience. This for two reasons; the concept is strong enough to stand alone and all viewers could watch without prejudice. As it stands some viewers will carry a pre-conception as To how the story "should" be told.

However, the main reason for falling short of giving Welcome to Marwen a 10/10 is insecurity from this reviewer. The format is so fresh that there are few points of reference - this rating may well improve over time.

It IS a must see, also an invitation to grow up - and get back in contact with the; playful and curious approach to learning so many of us have forgotten.

I would like to start by saying that I absolutely loved this film. My rating is indicative of objective issues with the film, but that doesn't mean it was bad. It just means I want people to be aware that it does, like every film, have its issues.

So let's hit the two biggest problems. There is a lot of symbolism in this film, but you wouldn't realize it due to the fact that they slap you in the face with it and get across a message of, "Do you see what these things represent?" I would much rather have just had the symbolism be symbolism and not have the main character near the end say, "Oh, you're this thing and not what you seem."

As for the storytelling, I found it incredibly compelling. Others are saying it's awkward, but that's what really hooked me. Yes, there are very awkward moments in this film, but they fit with the theme and the overall attitude and mindset of the main character. Aside from that, it did drag in some places. There are a few scenes that could have been cut from the final draft and would not have taken anything from the story. Again, that doesn't make it a bad film.

The acting was fantastic, and I think they got the casting spot on. The visual effects of "Marwen" were very well done.

I gave the film a 7/10 because, again, I wanted to be objective. However, based on my own subjective opinion of the film...11/10. I loved the whole thing from start to finish.

Remember, think for yourself when it comes to film. Don't take reviews too seriously, because not everyone has the same tastes.

I'll make this brief. While there is some very interesting photography and cinematographic turns, and, a very good performance by Steve Carell in a thankless role, this film is a very sanitized retelling of a true story. To everyone here with the 8-10 star reviews who can't figure out why the movie was pilloried by critics, watch the original documentary, MARWENCOL. Given the jarring disconnect between the tenor of this film and the true reality of the documentary, I'm very surprised that Carell took the role..