‘Welcome
to Marwen,’ director Robert Zemeckis’ (‘Back to the Future’ trilogy, ‘Forrest
Gump,’ ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit,’ ‘Cast Away’) latest high-concept dramedy
mixing live action and CG-mimicked Robot Chicken style stop motion animation,
is as ambitious and well-meaning as it is futile and doomed to failure. A fanciful adaptation of the
inspiring and redemptive true story of artist and hate crime victim Mark
Hogancamp as chronicled in the 2010 documentary ‘Marwencol,’ WTM failed to
connect with the critics and audience in a big way and is on pace to become one
of the biggest bombs of 2018.
Which
leads me to think that the critics and moviegoers really have no clue sometimes, because WTM is truly a subtly poignant and
profound movie of, as The New Yorker film critic Richard Brody put it,
“extraordinary virtuosity.” In depicting
the way Hogancamp recovers and copes with his shattered psyche and emotions in
the aftermath of being nearly beaten to death, Zemeckis takes it one step
further by breathing life into the many characters he created in his lovingly
detailed WWII Belgian village in miniature, be they evil Nazis or empowered resistance
femmes fatales. Going by the ease with
which Roberta (Merritt Weaver), Julie (Janelle Monáe), Carlala (Eiza
González), Anna (Gwendoline Christie) and Suzette (Leslie Zemeckis) dispatched
plastic 12” Nazis (Waffen SS no less) in withering hails of gunfire, you don’t
want to mess with these “Hogie’s Angels.”
Perhaps because Hogancamp is a cross-dresser mistaken for a homosexual who occasionally wore high heels (“the higher the better” as his movie counterpart Steve Carell drunkenly declared before being beaten to a bloody mess) and thereby exhibited deviant behavior violating social norms and expectations, he isn’t nearly as likeable or deserving of our empathy as that dimwitted but loveable “life is like a box of chocolates, ya never know what yer gonna get” schmuck Forrest Gump. And therein lies the rub with this WWII Toy Story.
Grade: A
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