Welcome to Marwen2018

Zemeckis-fest What a curious film. Without a doubt, messy, but I also think there’s some heart there too. I think the movie was attempting to be much broader than it should have been. It’s about a weird man, but it’s also got these big CGI action sequences.  Honestly, it reminds me of Ben Stiller’s Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and what makes this one less appealing is that the main character is weirder, and the situation is more normal, whereas in Walter Mitty, it’s the reverse. In Walter Mitty, you see a normal, if reserved, guy go on a crazy journey, and it’s a lot easier to put yourself in his shoes. It’s harder for me to imagine myself in size eleven stilettos. And I think that’s what makes this movie more interesting. Zemeckis tried to make a wide-reaching movie about a real person who isn’t very relatable, at least in how he’s portrayed on screen. He’s just different, and in turn, this movie is different too.  I’m not going to rate this not because it’s bad, because it sits in that strange limbo between idea, ambition, and execution where they all exist but can’t quite come together, and yet there is enjoyment still to be derived from it. Overly disliked, but it makes sense that people can’t connect with it. And honestly, I just wish Zemeckis made a WWII movie with dolls. Obviously, a lot of effort went into those sequences, and it brings back his interest in mocap and animation. But it’s hard to justify either part of the movie on its own, and so he tried to combine both.  It’s the same issues I’ve had with most of his later films in that there’s just enough story or material for a full film, at least in the way he makes them, and thus they end up feeling a little hollow or empty.  So no, I’m not going to be seeking this movie out to watch again, but I won’t say never,p ever. But I also don’t think I’d recommend it to anyone except as a curiosity.