WELCOME TO MARWEN

12A

INSPIRED by a remarkable true story sensitively captured in the 2010 documentary Marwencol, Robert Zemeckis’s heart-warming yarn of self-rediscovery fails to connect on any emotional level. In his previous work including Back To the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Forrest Gump, the Oscar-winning film-maker demonstrates a flair for plucking heartstrings while he engineers fantastical adventures on a grand scale. If life is like a box of chocolates then, disappointingly, Welcome To Marwen serves up a handsomely packaged selection of bland hard centres, which are impossible to swallow. A surfeit of flashy digital trickery, which magically brings to life an adult man’s toy box of plastic dolls, overwhelms character development and hampers momentum.

The misfiring script co-written by Caroline Thompson unspools in real and imagined worlds, the latter providing a safe space where the victim of a horrific attack can piece together fragments of his shattered psyche.

Mark Hogancamp (Steve Carell) is assaulted outside a bar by thugs who take exception to him drunkenly confessing his penchant for wearing women’s high-heels.

Sickening blows result in massive brain trauma. “They kicked every memory I had out of my head,” cries Mark, who undergoes exhausting physical therapy alongside injured soldier Julie ( Janelle Monae).

In order to rebuild his life, he constructs a miniature World War II village called Marwen in his backyard, populated with dolls that look like friends and neighbours.

The five attackers are portrayed as vicious Nazi officers while Mark adopts the guise of a swaggering American GI.

With Barbie-esque inhabitants of Marwen, Roberta (Merritt Weaver) and Caralala (Eiza Gonzalez), soldier Julie, Russian carer Anna (Gwendoline Christie), adult film actress Suzette (Leslie Zemeckis) and Nicol (Leslie Mann), Mark re-enacts murky episodes from his past so he can confront his demons.

Welcome To Marwen is as hollow and plastic as the figurines.

The script lacks an obvious emotional crescendo and Carell’s talents as a dramatic actor are largely untapped while gossamer-thin romantic subplots become an unsightly and unedifying tangle.

DAMON SMITH