The special effects in Welcome to Marwen are on display from the first scene. Our Hero, the brave toy Cap’n Hogie, is shot down during World War II and immediately has a problem. He shoes catch fire. It’s a setback, but luckily, he finds a crashed Nazi car with a truck in the back seat. Inside he finds a pair of black and white wingtip…women’s pumps. He likes wearing the high heel shoes, finds that they help him to understand dames, and he wants to make it clear, he likes dames.
We then meet Mark Hogancamp, a man with serious brain damage who spends the bulk of his time in the film playing with dolls and taking photos of them. We shift between the real world and the make believe world of Marwen. We are told that Mark had a life before he was attacked, but we see very little of that life, since it is gone forever.
Since reality and fantasy coexist in this film, it’s hard to tell what really happened. It seems he was married, but maybe she was just a girl friend, or maybe even just a friend. Mark likes women’s shoes and has an impressive collection. The women of Marwen all wear high heels. A particularly inspired scene has the five women march to Addicted to Love as their heels clickity clack in a very sexy way.
Welcome to Marwen is good. The acting is great, the writing is fun, and the special effects are very impressive.
The trailers in front of Welcome to Marwen were, odd. The first one was for a foreign film with subtitles. WTF? There was also one for a horror movie with a jump scare at the end. Again, wtf? Welcome to Marwen isn’t exactly an art house film and while there is a lot of violence, it’s mostly cartoonish in nature.
For some reason Welcome to Marwen is bombing at the Box Office. Lots of reviewers seem to hate everything about it. Lots of people just didn’t go to see it. I think part of the problem for movies like Welcome to Marwen is that there are a lot of good films out these days. I don’t pay much attention to opening days anymore and I don’t even know when most movies open. I’m still surprised at how quickly movies hit the shelves at Walmart. I constantly pickup a DVD and ask, oh did that come out already?
Go see Welcome to Marwen, or wait a couple of weeks and pick it up at Walmart.
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