though lacking in subtlety, Robert Zemeckis' "Welcome to Marwen" delivers a sentimental fantasy world worth wading in; Zemeckis' film parallels the sensational imagination of Hogancamp with the reality of his recovery
strange and affecting; The story's knotty aspects reverberate under its sentimental-cum-inspirational surface. In the guise of a glossy entertainment, Welcome to Marwen gets at some unnervingly irresolvable truths about humanity
despite a sympathetic lead performance from Steve Carell, the fictionalized version bogs down in extensive animated doll sequences, so similar they grow increasingly tiresome
"Welcome to Marwen" simply don't feel satisfying or emotionally authentic to me; The real-life scenes don't feel like Hogancamp's real life; they feel like a Hollywood falsification of it, despite Carell's and Mann's valiant efforts
"Welcome to Marwen" reduced the complicated and ineffably human saga of Mark Hogancamp into a glossy inspirational fable about the power of friendship, it's even more disconcerting to find that the film itself does much the same thing
"Welcome to Marwen" does not work as a drama of addiction, and frankly it doesn't work as a celebration of Hogancamp's creations, which work best as stunning still-photo images