Welcome To Marwen
Universal Pictures | Release Date: December 21, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
40
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
17
Negative:
13
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 20, 2018
One of the many graceful touches in Welcome to Marwen is the total lack of pity or condescension in either world. Read full review
70
Film ThreatAlan NgFeb 19, 2019
Much like anyone in the throes of recovery, this journey is not a nice, tight, three-act Hollywood story with a perfect dramatic ending. Finding “normal” is a distant speck on the horizon for Hogancamp and this film depicts only a small segment. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangDec 20, 2018
It’s a muddled, tortured miasma of a movie and also, inevitably, a fascinating one. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterKeith UhlichDec 19, 2018
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. Read full review
67
The Film StageVikram MurthiJan 3, 2019
Zemeckis has crafted a work that may be dismissed and forgotten by the general public, but will inevitably remain a curiosity for cinephiles and auteurists everywhere. Not a bad feat for a guy embarking upon the fourth decade of his career. Read full review
63
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonDec 20, 2018
The movie works best when it falls back on plain old acting. Merritt Wever is sweet presence as the hobby shop worker and gentle soul who understands Mark’s obsessions, and appreciates his art. Her scenes with Carell are the movie’s least technological, and its best. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 20, 2018
Welcome to Marwen won’t be another Zemeckis blockbuster, won’t be anybody’s idea of Oscar bait. But here’s a thought-provoking holiday movie that gives the viewer something to chew on even if the story feels a trifle undigested, at times. Read full review
63
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanDec 19, 2018
Hogancamp was a talented illustrator before the attack rendered him unable to draw. In retreating to a world of his imagination as a way to exorcise the demons that tormented him, he ended up creating real art. I’m not sure Zemeckis’s achievement rises to the same level, but this cinematic excursion to Marwen is almost certainly a trip to someplace you haven’t been before. Read full review
60
EmpireIan FreerJan 1, 2019
A genuine oddity, Welcome To Marwen may not hit the emotional highs but mixes high-concept fun with a sincere attempt to describe trauma in an original visceral way. And Zemeckis’ filmmaking remains exemplary. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 20, 2018
What makes the movie interesting — and disturbing on a few different levels — is how its sentimental, inspirational elements do battle with darker impulses. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicGarrett MitchellDec 19, 2018
Though lacking in subtlety, Robert Zemeckis' Welcome to Marwen delivers a sentimental fantasy world worth wading in. Read full review
50
ConsequenceBlake GobleDec 20, 2018
Marwen is too much, not enough, and yet still deeply watchable. It’s admirable for the wildly different approaches it takes. Only a stylist like Zemeckis could try something like this. Take a real man’s witty, real-life therapy-based photography and attempt to spin it into a mo-cap circus with every genre tool he can think of. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerDec 19, 2018
Ultimately, this is the best version of this story that the CG-obsessed Zemeckis could have possibly produced. But just because he could make it, that doesn't mean he should. Read full review
50
New York PostSara StewartDec 19, 2018
Despite a sympathetic lead performance from Steve Carell, the fictionalized version bogs down in extensive animated doll sequences, so similar they grow increasingly tiresome. Read full review
50
VarietyOwen GleibermanDec 19, 2018
The film is far from incompetent, and it brims with ambition, but too much of the time what’s happening just sits there. It’s a lavishly odd concoction, like a feel-good movie for OCD miniature-world Barbie-doll fetishists. Read full review
50
TheWrapCandice FrederickDec 19, 2018
Some parts of Marwen just seem empty, and while the filmmakers and Carell earn praise for tackling trauma through animation, the film ultimately has no real impact. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyDec 19, 2018
If Marwencol made your heart go out to Mark, Welcome to Marwen does something quite different. It makes you want to back away from him slowly. Read full review
50
IndieWireDavid EhrlichDec 19, 2018
“The most original movie of the year?” Not quite. But sometimes, if a film is this hard to sell, perhaps that’s a sign that it shouldn’t have been made in the first place. Read full review
48
The VergeJesse HassengerDec 20, 2018
It’s both a calculated attempt to recapture some of the emotional magic of his successes, and a clinical analysis of how exactly humanistic but effects-driven filmmaking is supposed to work. These qualities make it fascinating, but ineffectual as a narrative — or even as a demo reel. Zemeckis seems to think he’s showing heart. Instead, he’s messily dissecting it. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Simran HansJan 1, 2019
The film fetishises female strength, but only in its ability to prop up men; its women remain prettified empty shells. Read full review
40
Rolling StoneDavid FearDec 20, 2018
You never doubt the good intentions of Zemeckis and Steve Carell, who plays Hogancamp with genuine grace. Sadly, something essential went missing in the trip from Marwencol to Marwen. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaDec 19, 2018
Welcome to Marwen is a totally confounding movie. None of this is because of Hogancamp’s actual story, which remains rich and wild and full of pathos, nor Carell’s performance, which is subtle and wounded and resists all mawkish special-man tics it could have lapsed into. But the frame of a Robert Zemeckis–directed Inspirational True Story and the syrupy Alan Silvestri score that blankets it are just too many layers of abstraction over a story that already contains multitudes. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinDec 19, 2018
The film is such a crackpot tangle that it is even hard to fathom what a successful version might have looked like. Read full review
40
Screen DailyStephen Whitty Dec 19, 2018
For a movie that’s supposed to be about a modern-day Geppetto bringing his dolls to life, the wooden Welcome to Marwen never makes it out of the toy box. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawDec 19, 2018
The remarkable career of artist and photographer Mark Hogancamp has been turned into an elaborate and misjudged movie of baffling pass-agg ickiness and pointlessness. Read full review
38
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyDec 21, 2018
As for those special effects, they are vivid, colorful, convincing. They aren’t quite so good that you don’t notice the WWII fantasy scenarios enacted therein are clichéd constructions reenacted in high heels. Read full review
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzDec 20, 2018
Welcome to Marwen is the ultimate Robert Zemeckis movie. This is not intended as a compliment. The film – not quite comedy, not quite drama, but definitely indigestible – finds Zemeckis embracing his worst late-career indulgences. Read full review
38
The Associated PressLindsey BahrDec 20, 2018
This is a complex man and artist worthy of a complex story, not a would-be-feel-good farce. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineGreg CwikDec 19, 2018
The whole endeavor feels like a disservice to Mark Hogancamp’s story, in no small part because no one in the film feels human, even outside doll form. Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 19, 2018
Welcome to Marwen is a misjudgment only a first-rate filmmaker could make. Read full review
33
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Dec 20, 2018
It’s the weirdest film of his (Zemeckis) career. One of the worst, too. Read full review
30
VoxEmily VanDerWerffDec 20, 2018
Welcome to Marwen is a disastrously misconceived movie, but in such a boring way that it’s hard to imagine its target audience. Most of the time, big-screen disasters are hugely ambitious tales that completely miss the mark. This one hits the mark, but it’s probably not a target anybody should have been aiming at. Read full review
30
SlateSam AdamsDec 19, 2018
Welcome to Marwen is a tragedy, not because of how Mark’s story ends, but because it’s the work of a filmmaker who’s never been more sure of his craft, and never less connected to anything resembling actual human experience. The movie’s underlying theme is that fantasy is an escape from the real world that can help people return to it, but it doesn’t seem like Zemeckis is ever coming back. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonDec 19, 2018
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. Read full review
25
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 19, 2018
The tone is almost willfully off-putting. The parts that are supposed to be cute could give you the creeps. The film is almost a Platonic ideal of how to take an emotionally transfixing real-life story and get it wrong. Read full review
25
IGNMatthew DoughertyDec 19, 2018
Director Robert Zemeckis hits a new artistic low with Welcome to Marwen, a film that mistakes schmaltz for substance and employs downright boring novelty animation in a hackneyed attempt to stir the emotions. Read full review
16
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezJan 3, 2019
Based on the story of a man beaten so mercilessly he had to construct a fantasy world in order to survive his great pain and suffering, Robert Zemeckis’ insipid Welcome To Marwen is a painfully schmaltzy misjudged disaster, and superficial retelling that dishonors a layered and agonizing story about trauma. Read full review
0
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 20, 2018
The results are mind-numbingly immense, joylessly violent and utterly lifeless. Read full review
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